Sing Sing
Patrick D

Review by Patrick D

Sing Sing 2023

★★★★★

Watched 23 Aug 2024

Devastatingly humanistic. I’m floored.

Sing Sing is a film about incarceration, acting, and masculinity. It’s a film with immediate and sustained dramatic stakes. Watery eyes and a lumpy throat will persist for most of its runtime. If this description makes it sound sappy, or reaching, it’s not. It’s funny, tender, brutal—all of its characters feel complete, none of them reduced to devices to serve a plot.

The cast of Sing Sing is largely comprised of formerly incarcerated actors playing themselves, which lends an authenticity to a film that might not work otherwise. The two lead performances are excellent; as are all the supporting ones. Colman Domingo is a shoe-in for a Best Actor trophy. He has so many tools to communicate his character’s profound yearning for humanity: the tenor of his voice, the lined expressions on his face, the anguish in his eyes. It’s a performance without excess—every moment contributes to the story’s emotional and thematic core. 

Go see this movie. If it doesn’t move the needle for you, I’m not sure what will.

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