Sing Sing
A24 | Release Date: July 12, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
83
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 43 Critic Reviews
Positive:
41
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinAug 22, 2024
It’s a funny, insightful, sensationally acted account of art’s capacity to dissolve walls, and heighten, broaden and deepen the reach of our lives. Read full review
100
Original-CinChris KnightAug 1, 2024
RTA is a strictly volunteer program, with no academic requirement to enter or good-behaviour code to remain. Sing Sing, while not an advertisement for the program, does seem to capture what makes it special, and what its participants get from the experience. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJul 31, 2024
To our great benefit, the material is handled beautifully, even tenderly, without becoming maudlin. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonJul 31, 2024
Sing Sing refuses to pass any judgment while inviting the audience to acknowledge the incontrovertible fact that these people are humans just like us. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonJul 30, 2024
Sing Sing is also a celebration of the creative expressiveness of live theater and its possibilities. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshJul 15, 2024
A film like Sing Sing is a rare, precious achievement — a cinematic work of unique empathy and hand-turned humanity, hewed from the heart, with rigorous attention paid to the creative process. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzJul 12, 2024
It doesn't move or feel like any other prison movie, or movie about theater students, that I've seen, and its commitment to the truth of its characters -- and of life itself -- is rare and precious. Read full review
100
ABC NewsPeter TraversJul 12, 2024
The first indisputably great movie of 2024 is a blazing Oscar contender about a real-life prison arts program that helps caged birds, led by a simply stupendous Colman Domingo, to rediscover their humanity with a heart full to bursting and a spirit that soars. Read full review
95
The Daily Beast Fletcher PetersMar 26, 2024
Sing Sing is a revelation. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicDina KaurAug 14, 2024
Don’t forget to bring a box of tissues with you when heading to see “Sing Sing.” That isn’t because it’s a sad story necessarily, but one that moves you and makes you empathize with the main characters. It is real and raw. Read full review
90
Screen RantRachel LaBonteJul 25, 2024
It's a testament to the care that went into this movie, the hard work of the cast and crew, and the power of the story itself that I left the theater both moved and inspired. This is a movie that will likely stick with me for some time, and I'm glad; I think it's not one that should be forgotten. Read full review
90
IGNCarlos AguilarJul 16, 2024
Sing Sing gathers a collection of heartfelt, nuanced performances in an unmissable drama about the life-altering effects of a real-life rehabilitation-through-theater program at the titular prison. Read full review
90
The New York TimesLisa KennedyJul 11, 2024
The cinematography (by Pat Scola) does its own cagey and elegant work, giving Sing Sing an undercurrent shine while evoking the rougher intimacy of a documentary. The movie’s casting — more than 85 percent of the cast participated in Sing Sing’s R.T.A. program — achieves something similar. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJan 9, 2025
It features a great performance by Domingo but, in some ways the less showy contributions of the former real-life inmates represent the best Sing Sing has to offer. The movie is touching and uplifting in often unexpected ways. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldAug 6, 2024
Winner of the best film award at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival, Greg Kwedar’s “Sing Sing” is a gentle reminder of the power of art to transform lives. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 1, 2024
Sing Sing exerts a strong pull on the heartstrings — but without the hard sell or the crafty, manipulative exertion. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenJul 30, 2024
For a based-on-fact drama about incarcerated men finding hope via a prison theater group, Sing Sing presses gently on the inspirational pedal. This is due partly to the behind-the-scenes talent—screenwriter Clint Bentley has fashioned a tender, mostly restrained screenplay, while writer-director Greg Kwedar establishes a crucially authentic sense of place—but largely due to the cast. Read full review
85
Film ThreatAlan NgMar 10, 2024
You need to see Sing Sing for what it represents. It’s never too late to turn your life around. No matter where you are in life, you can be a positive impact on the world around you…no matter how small it is. Lastly, never give up on hope. Read full review
83
The AtlanticShirley LiJul 22, 2024
With so many details pulled directly from history, along with scenes shot inside an intake prison that had housed the RTA alumni featured in Sing Sing, the film often plays like a documentary. Read full review
83
The Film StageJordan RaupSep 19, 2023
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. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeSep 1, 2024
It’s powerful and profoundly moving stuff. Read full review
80
Total FilmKate StablesAug 30, 2024
Touching rather than touchy-feely, it’s a high-stakes story with its fair share of fights, deaths and the jail-or-joy tensions of parole hearings. If it’s also a tad starry-eyed about drama as a cultural cure-all, Kwedar’s empathy for the life-battered inmates makes this a rare, graceful work. Read full review
80
EmpireHelen O'HaraAug 30, 2024
Brimming with compassion and punctuated by humour, this is a moving look at prison and prisoners. It’s both infuriating and inspirational to see so much beauty in such a harsh environment. Read full review
80
Little White LiesIsaac Feldberg Aug 29, 2024
Often sharing the screen with Domingo, Maclin makes an even more powerful impression; the scenes in which these two circle each other, gradually lowering their defences and letting themselves become vulnerable, are gorgeously tender and dramatically vibrant. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeAug 28, 2024
Sing Sing itself does us all good while delivering a compendium of engaging personal dramas. Domingo rules over all like the most benign of creative deities. Read full review
80
ColliderTaylor GatesJul 12, 2024
Sing Sing feels like a true ensemble piece, giving all of its characters a chance to shine. Read full review
80
TimeStephanie ZacharekJul 12, 2024
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. Read full review
80
Rolling StoneDavid FearJul 12, 2024
A prison drama less interested in crime and punishment than in catharsis and the creative power of theater, director Greg Kwedar’s chronicle of how the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program affects its participants wants you to focus on the humanity on display over everything else. Read full review
80
The GuardianRadheyan SimonpillaiJul 11, 2024
Sing Sing isn’t just telling an uplifting story. The story of its own making is uplifting. Read full review
80
BBCCaryn JamesJul 11, 2024
It is a small movie with steep odds against it, but it is also extraordinarily accomplished. Read full review
80
Time OutWhelan BarzeyJun 12, 2024
Sing Sing’s most affecting quality is its commitment to reality over shock value. With Domingo masterfully anchoring the ensemble, it’s never bogged down by the specifics of the men’s crimes. Read full review
80
Paste MagazineTrace SauveurMay 6, 2024
Greg Kwedar’s sensitive, joyous Sing Sing does more than simply dramatize the workings of the RTA program, it incorporates participants into the very fabric of the film’s DNA. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesAug 8, 2024
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. Read full review
75
ObserverLaura BabiakJul 10, 2024
Prison has long been seen as fertile soil for drama, but no movie has engaged with that idea quite like Sing Sing. This isn’t a legal drama or an escape thriller, but an exploration of what storytelling and artistic expression can do for a person who dearly needs an outlet. Read full review
75
The Associated PressMark KennedyJul 10, 2024
This is a premise that could turn horrifically treacly or maudlin. But Greg Kwedar — who directs and co-writes with Clint Bentley — has a firm, no-nonsense but emotional hand, even if he uses a few too many razor wire-though-the-window shots. Read full review
70
Screen DailyTim GriersonJan 23, 2025
Kwedar never denies the harsh realities of the penitentiary system but, by preferring an ultimately hopeful tone, he eventually falls victim to some of the tropes of the prison drama which his thoughtful picture had, until that point, mostly sidestepped. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreJul 12, 2024
Sing Sing may be an awkward chimera of a film, combining vibrant source material with synthetic attempts to serve as a star vehicle, but its insistence on the healing capacity of art is enough to soften the hardest of hearts. Read full review
70
The New YorkerJustin ChangJul 12, 2024
The insistent feel-good trajectory comes at the expense of thornier truths. The movie, for all its understanding of hard time, can’t keep from going a little soft. Read full review
67
IndieWireVikram MurthiJul 11, 2024
Too often watching Sing Sing, you can feel the film’s manufactured drama push up against its embedded realism. The film’s immersive elements, and its valiant efforts to eschew prison film stereotypes, are commonly at war with a narrative at best designed to be instructive rather than compel on its own merits. Read full review
63
Washington PostAmy NicholsonAug 2, 2024
As much as the script quotes Shakespeare, it’s a lot closer to “The Shawshank Redemption,” a well-meaning reminder that the incarcerated are human beings, too. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineGregory NussenJul 8, 2024
In its depiction of actors flourishing through artistic struggle, Sing Sing ultimately argues that the most effective liberation happens through the freeing of the body as well as the soul. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawAug 20, 2024
It’s an intriguing filmic tribute to the rehabilitation programme: effective altruism in action. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubNatalia KeoganJul 11, 2024
The strength of the cast alone can’t elevate Sing Sing to the realm of truly socially conscious cinema. Read full review
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