Reseñas de la crítica

A mish-mash of Hamlet, Peter Pan, time travel, and Ancient Egypt called Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code, the production is teased in bits but never really comes into picture for the viewer as a whole. No matter – the rehearsal process is the point. It’s in this space that masculinity is interrogated, imagination is nourished, and these men get to be defined not by their past trauma but by their resilience and renewed capacity for joy. This is the space in which the empathic Sing Sing soars.

To watch this movie’s actors, many of them playing versions of the men they used to be not so long ago—to see them incorporating classic pop-locking moves into their swordplay, or tinkering with the phrasing of Hamlet’s soliloquy until it rings true to their experience—is to witness a cautious but joyful reawakening.

Prison life is not ignored or whitewashed — the film’s No. 1 recurring shot is the constricting view of a claustrophobic cell as seen through an door’s peephole, as damning a visual metaphor as you could ask for. But this is a movie that places a solid emphasis on the second word over the first, and makes a case that incarceration is not an excuse for indignity or inhumanity.

Sing Sing is a tender, earnest creation that isn’t about what art does for audiences so much as it is about what art does for those who are able to participate in it.

Sing Sing is an emotional prison drama that doesn’t beg for your tears amid all of the typical heartstring-tugging signifiers that come with the genre’s territory. It represents these lives sincerely and avoids grandiose histrionics, melding the real experiences of these men within the fantasy of filmmaking to find graceful emotional truths.

Against all odds, this works beautifully. Sing Sing is a polished, affecting film based on harsh but hopeful realities.

However, the strength of the cast alone can’t elevate Sing Sing to the realm of truly socially conscious cinema... Though rife with phenomenal performances, an air of performative engagement can’t help but cling to the fabric of Sing Sing.

The film doesn’t pry. Nor does it take too much dramatic license. Kwedar isn’t making Shawshank to satisfy the demands of an audience. Instead, he’s inviting that audience to be part of something that demands patience and transcends the usual extractive relationship films have with their subjects.

It’s a film that feels entirely too eager to relay its noble intentions... The spreading out of screen time and attention to each participant can make the film feel like an advertisement for the real-life RTA rather than the incisive critique of systemic racism and classism that it purports to be.

There’s a rich tradition of filmmaking that draws equally on dramatic and documentary techniques. “Sing Sing” is a fine addition to it.

Beautifully showing the importance of healing through art, Sing Sing skirts the treacly traps of a feel-good crowd-pleaser by providing a detailed, authentic roadmap for restoring a life burdened by trauma.

Though the film has one false ending too many, “Sing Sing” is a redemptive portrait of theater’s power to heal, emancipate, and rebel.