Chicago Critics Film Fest 2024 Review: Sing Sing

✰✰✰✰½​ (out of five)

Synopsis: Based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison, the film centers on a group of incarcerated men involved in the creation of theatrical stage shows through the program.

Trust the process.

This is an on-going theme and line of dialogue of the beautiful film "Sing Sing." The film contains traditional boundaries and tropes in prison films that builds to an eventuality in that genre of films. But as an audience member, if you believe in the theme and become it, then the ending is one of emotional earned viability. 

Trusting the process is placing the subject material in capable acting hands. Colman Domingo in the lead is the anchor, Paul Raci is the guiding light, and the heart is the actual former prisoners part of the RTA theater program, most especially Clarence "Divine Eye" Maclin. This film is a full bodied work of redemption, breathing and alive with emotional depth. It is an instant hook into the lives--good and bad--of each of these individuals. 

I found a quote from theology author Lewis B. Smedes: "To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you." Trusting a process that truly sets you free is what makes "Sing Sing" so unmistakably freeing for it's performers and viewers alike.