Cometh awards season, cometh Colman Domingo. The Fear the Walking Dead and Euphoria star looks like the man to beat at next year's Oscars for his lead performance in this powerhouse prison story, a film that challenges your expectations and ultimately replenishes the viewer's faith in humanity. Sing Sing is a must-see - and you'll be exhorting others to do the same.
Domingo plays John 'Divine G' Whitfield, a man serving 25 to life at New York state's maximum security Sing Sing Correctional Facility - for a crime that he now has proof he did not commit. Whitfield is the lynchpin of Sing Sing's Rehabilitation Through the Arts programme, staging plays with his fellow prisoners under the direction of their longtime collaborator Brent Buell (The Sound of Metal breakout Paul Raci).
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As the group's next production is decided, they are joined by a new member: Clarence 'Divine Eye' Maclin (Clarence Maclin - playing a younger version of himself), a fearsome presence on the yard who somehow can quote passages from King Lear because a copy just happened to be lying around. Soon, Maclin is challenging the group and vice versa as walls come tumbling down.
"Sometimes, it's all just a little too much on the heart," says a character early on in Sing Sing, unwittingly offering up an unofficial tagline for the entire film. This is a beautiful-but-tough example of the reasons why we go to the cinema in the first place: a story based on real-life people that hooks you from the get-go, superb performances, and the opportunity for everyone on screen and off to reconnect with their own compassion.
There are a couple of big surprises here. For starters, Colman Domingo and Paul Raci's co-stars are former prisoners who starred in Sing Sing productions - and they match the professionals in every scene. Secondly, all the cast and crew agreed to take the same daily salary to get the film made. Thirdly, you continually have to remind yourself that you're not watching a documentary. Then there are the revelations when a smile arrives unexpectedly or a moment of candour is shared among the group while they are "real with each other and vulnerable".
Oscar-nominated last year for the biographical drama Rustin, Domingo's place on the Academy Awards' Best Actor shortlist in January is guaranteed. It will take some performance (yet to be seen) to deny him the biggest night of his career next March. He may not be the only Sing Sing alumnus on the stage at the Dolby Theatre either: co-star Clarence Maclin is stunning as the ball of confusion with the chance to realise his own potential, while director Greg Kwedar, who co-wrote and co-produced, could also be up there for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Let's see how much momentum Sing Sing picks up in the months ahead. In the meantime, you know where you should be.
There are two niggles regarding a shocking turn of events as opening night looms and the ending - both needed to be finessed - but, otherwise, Sing Sing is the perfect drama in which to showcase the genre's most important lesson of the lot: that people can always be more than one thing.
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