Sing Sing Review
Earlier this week I was able to check out the upcoming A24, Sing Sing at Regal’s Movie Mystery Monday screening. This is one that wasn’t really on my radar, but I heard fantastic buzz coming out of film festivals. I was excited because this was the movie I was able to see. How is the film? Does it deserve all of the praise it’s been getting? Let’s get started talking about it!
The Good
The best thing about this film is that it makes you feel so many different emotions. Where it can be heartfelt, it can be emotional, it can be funny. The movie makes you feel all sorts of different emotions as you’re watching it. And all of the emotions feel real, they feel earned and it’s probably going to be the 2024 film that made me feel the most emotions or the most spectrum of emotions. When the movie finished, I overheard some people say that they were crying at certain scenes. Everybody in my theater seemed to love the film and laugh. If you don’t know what the film is about. It’s based on a true story. It follows Colman Domingo’s character who is in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and finds his purpose doing acting in the theater program. Through learning lessons about humanity and working in the arts, changes Domingo’s character but other characters in the film. Because it’s uplifting and it’s about this group of guys bonding over acting, it’s inspirational. As I was leaving the film, I was thinking that it makes you feel similar emotions to what The Shawshank Redemption makes you feel. I’m not saying this film is better than that film, but it pulls out a lot of the same emotions but the films are very different.
Another thing about the film that really worked is just how real the film feels. After watching the film, I watched interviews with the director and the cast and they shot the film on location. There were not sets built for this film and the fact they shot the film in a prison adds so much to it. It feels real, you can see the dedication of the cast and crew in this film. In this interview they talked about how they used natural lighting and because it’s in a prison they could only do so much with the lighting. They had these big fans on when they weren’t filming, but when they were filming they turned them off so it would get hot. They even said shooting in a prison is a hard thing to do. But the fact they didn’t give up, the fact they shot this film in those hard circumstances I feel like adds so much to the film. Once again, when you know the dedication of everybody is in the film it makes the film feel real and powerful. The part that really shocked me about the film was that the inmates in the film are played by the inmates of the real life story. Early on in the film, there’s an audition sequence with the inmates. And those were the real auditions that the real life people used for the audition process of the film. As I was watching it, it felt like watching a documentary rather than watching a film
I think another great thing about this film is that the acting from everybody is great. In the lead is Colman Domingo, he’s been in Hollywood for a while. But it seems like in the last couple of years he’s been getting a lot more attention. He was Oscar nominated last year for Rustin, he was in The Color Purple. I missed those films, I believe this was my first time seeing Domingo and I thought he was great. I sure hope he gets more award love this season, I hope he gets a Best Actor nomination. He’s able to play this character who’s broken, we see that he’s hiding a lot of emotions in. But he’s also noble and just inspirational and trying to help people. His character makes you want to be a better person. Domingo’s character forms a friendship with Divine Eye, who’s our secondary lead in the film. Like I said earlier, the character is played by a real life person. Which is so cool, it makes the performance better when he’s able to emote the emotions that he experienced. But everybody in the film is really good, for not being super professional actors they were very convincing in these roles. Once again, the fact that the characters in the film are played by real life people (besides Domingo’s character) just makes the performance feel real. They feel like real people, the dialogue doesn’t sound fake.
Speaking to what I said earlier about the film making you feel so many different emotions, one of the emotions it evokes from you is humor and funniness. And this film has a nice sense of humor to it. The humor is appropriately placed all throughout the film, it never breaks the tension with a joke. My audience was laughing out loud multiple times in the film. They’re not big joke setups, it’s subtle little moments that come from the dynamics and relationships between the characters. When a film is able to have genuine humor, humor that doesn’t feel forced I think that’s when you have great humor that works.
Finally, I felt like the film did a great job of setting up a lot of pieces that will have great payoff later on. But it’s done very well, it’s done in a way that makes the film feel predictable. It’s done in a way, where it’ll set things up so when the payoff happens, it feels right. You know exactly what the payoff of the moment is, you know the emotions you're supposed to be feeling. It’s a great written script that’s able to set things up. But also make you feel a lot of different emotions as you’re watching the film.
The Bad
Honestly, I loved the film so there’s not much about the film that I think doesn’t work. I do think at points the amount of time in the film is a bit unclear. While I was watching the film, I thought it took place over the course of a couple of weeks. But other points, lines of dialogue implied it was months. This isn’t a big thing, but it made certain things a bit unclear as you’re watching it.
Final Thoughts: Sing Sing is absolutely fantastic, I think it deserves all of the praise and love that it’s been getting. The film makes you feel so many different emotions, whether it’s being funny, emotional, heartfelt, inspirational. Whatever the emotions may be, it makes you feel those emotions. The realness of the film through the locations, writing, and acting is fantastic. This movie does open wide on August 2nd, I encourage everybody reading this to go out and see the film if you can. I feel like this movie is going to do great come this award season.
The Score: 9.1/10 (A-)
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