Dan Webster reviews "Sing Sing"

DAN WEBSTER:

Few stories are more moving than those involving hard men forced to face their inherent vulnerabilities. That’s true both in real life and the movies.

That very kind of confrontation, in fact, is the source that fuels the based-on-real-life story captured in the film Sing Sing, directed by Greg Kwedar from a screenplay that Kwedar co-wrote with his producing partner Clint Bentley. Sing Sing—which is set in the upstate New York maximum-security facility of the same name—captures the experiences of the inmates who participate in the prison’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts (or RTA) program.

Central to the plot is John “Divine G” Whitfield (played by Colman Domingo), a man serving a 25-year sentence for a murder he insists he didn’t commit. G is an intelligent man, one who is the heart of Sing Sing’s RTA theater productions. Though the plays the group puts on are directed by someone from outside the prison—a character named Brent, played by Paul Raci—G writes some of the original works, and he acts in most of them.

Fresh off a rousing production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, G and his friend Mike Mike (played by Sean San Jose) go looking for new talent. And that’s how they find Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin (who, a former inmate, amazingly enough plays himself).

But though he’s interested in participating, Eye struggles, at first even to conform to the warm-up methods that experienced actors recognize: It’s play as art, pretending to be someone or something in order to break down who you are and better open yourself to making the needed transformation.

These kinds of exercises, though, are tough for Eye, a guy whose years behind bars have toughened him. We see just how much so in one scene as he braces a fellow inmate who he feels is trying to cheat him, and in another when—during a theatrical rehearsal—he reacts angrily when a cast member simply walks behind him. Eye, it’s clear, is no one to mess with.

It's equally clear early on that G and Eye are going to butt heads. And in a far less ambitious film, that might be the whole plot: two alphas gradually working to a final, and most likely violent, showdown.

But Kwedar and Bentley have something far more sophisticated in mind. They give us bits and pieces of every character’s story, beyond G and Eye and Mike Mike but also Dap and Preme and JJ and Dino as well—all of whom, like Maclin, are actual or former inmates themselves. We watch as one by one they audition for parts in a new play, written by Brent as a blend of time-travel fantasy and science fiction, making it about as far from Shakespeare as Pride and Prejudice is from Deadpool and Wolverine.

Eye begins to accept the group’s trust, which gives him confidence even as it seems to pit him against G—especially when Eye is given a role that G also had auditioned for. At the same time, apart from the play, G struggles to find a way to get his sentence commuted—something he feels might be possible if he can just get new evidence entered into the public record.

Which is the point when, facing disappointment coupled with a personal tragedy, G begins to pull away from the group that has supported him for so long. And as he does so, Eye and he gradually switch places: G is the one now needing help, and Eye becomes the one to provide it.

This shift in character motivation could feel as cliché as the one of battling alphas. What makes the difference is the power of the two actors. Fresh off his Oscar-nominated role in the biopic Rustin, Domingo is a dynamic actor, able to probe the heights of G’s strengths and the depths of his weaknesses.

For his part, Maclin—a veteran of the RTA program who helped Kwedar and Bentley conceive their script—is a sensation, a natural born actor whose death stare could send chills down the spine of a Marvel Studios superhero.

In the end, Sing Sing the film is a forceful study of desperate men, most of whom have done horrible things, striving for a chance at forging a life through art and, in the process, to achieve a sense of achievement—maybe even redemption.

For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.

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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for Spokesman.com.