There’s Oscars buzz for Colman Domingo’s new film Sing Sing – he deserves it

The very best movies alter your perspective and stay with you: think The Green Mile or Dead Poets Society. Colman Domingo’s quiet, life-affirming new drama also looks set to be one such film.

Set in the maximum-security correctional facility in New York, Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing is based on a true story and stars Domingo as John “Divine G” Whitfield, a wrongly imprisoned inmate and established member of the, also very real, Rehabilitation Through the Arts Programme (RTA).

Divine G is given the task of writing and staging a play alongside his fellow jailbirds which, following disagreements among the group, ends up becoming Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code, an amalgamated Ancient Egyptian, Shakespearean time-travelling pirate dramedy. 

There’s a huge selling point here, one which makes Sing Sing unlike anything that has come before it: aside from Domingo, Sound of Metal’s Paul Raci as the group’s director Brent, and Domingo’s pal and actor Sean San José as Divine G’s cellmate and best friend, the cast includes former prisoners who have used the programme to turn their lives around.

It’s evident that, along the way, they tapped into some incredible theatrical capabilities. There’s even a cameo from the real Whitfield, playing a book fan who asks Domingo’s character for an autograph.

At its heart is Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, playing a younger version of himself. Sentenced to 17 years for robbery, he used his time inside to commit to the RTA. Here, he is a barbed cynic, trapped in his own male bravado. As it did in real life, the programme slowly but surely pries him open – with a little help from Divine G.

Prisoners finding purpose while locked up is a well-trodden trope, covered broadly from hit films such as The Shawshank Redemption to BBC drama Time and last year’s touching queer indie movie The Lost Boys. But still, the prevailing public perception – that prisoners are inherently animalistic and unequivocally irredeemable – holds strong. If Sing Sing gets in front of the right people, it could be the film to change that.

Above all, it’s a film about hope, and what can happen when you believe you deserve better for yourself. It vibrates with the power of men allowing themselves to feel how they feel, and brings humanity to what is largely an inhumane environment, particularly for Black inmates, who are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted in America than white people.

But while largely warm, Sing Sing is at turns devastating, catching you off guard and tearing your heart out. By the end, it’s stitched it back up again, but at this point, your cheeks will already be tear-stained.

Sing Sing would not hit the way it does without Divine Eye’s moving character arc, but Domingo’s performance is impressively all-in. He filmed it in just 18 days, practically unheard of for a film buoyed by such a Hollywood hot-shot. However, it’s clear that this was no side project for the actor: if not a career-defining role, it is at the very least his most affecting and purposeful to date.

Reviewers are already tipping Sing Sing, particularly Drive-Away Dolls star Domingo, for Oscar success. “I’d be incredibly upset if he didn’t walk away with the best actor prize,” Radhika Seth wrote in Vogue.

It wouldn’t be Domingo’s first time at the awards season circus. This year, he was Oscar nominated for his turn as a gay activist in Netflix’s Rustin – making him only the second gay star to be nominated as best actor for playing a gay character.

He’s killing it elsewhere, too. His upcoming work includes a Michael Jackson biopic, where he’s playing patriarch Joseph. There’s a Nat King Cole biopic too, Netflix conspiracy-theory thriller The Madness and, maybe, season three of Euphoria. Aged 54 and with a career spanning 30 years, it feels as if it’s finally time for the actor to collect his flowers.

He’s not adverse to the idea, either. “I hope people continue to embrace this film, including on the awards circuit because it shows that films like this matter, and Black and brown men like this matter, and their stories matter,” he said recently.

Sing Sing, renamed the Ossining Correctional Facility in 1970, housed some of the most infamous inmates in US history – and was also the site of many executions. Among those jailed there were David Berkowitz, the serial killer known as The Son of Sam, Cold War spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, mob boss Charles “Lucky” Luciano, at least two members of Louis Lepke’s killers-for-hire gang known as Murder Inc, and 19th-century transgender prostitute Mary Jones.

Sing Sing is in cinemas now.

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