Two of the convicts — the actual Whitfield and Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin — wrote the story, adapted into a screenplay by Kwedar and Clint Bentley, with Maclin and several of the other now-released men from the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program playing a version of themselves. Paul Raci plays their director, Brent Buell, and you can tell he trained these first-timers well enough to hold their own alongside the Oscar contender.
Domingo’s character also feels a tad autobiographical. Lately, the actor has been chasing prestige awards bait — his version of Hamlet — that shortchanges his marvelously charismatic presence. Domingo can play funny, angry, powerful, loose, commanding and damaged all at once. But here, he gets only one scene to prove it and spends the rest of the run time being as mild and pleasant as the film itself. At least his Whitfield gets to perform two knockout Shakespeare soliloquies, the most impactful of which sees him dominate the stage in a cheap plastic crown, afterward returning to the wings to shrug on his prison uniform and recede into anonymity, just another body in an orderly line.
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. It announces that theme early and often, and to bolster its case, none of the characters even mention what landed them in the joint for over an hour, and most never mention it at all. The vibe isn’t penitentiary — it’s scholastic — with the inmates appearing to move freely from Sing Sing’s cinder block halls to the drama department’s classroom-style desks. (I’ll leave the design similarities between prisons and public schools for another section of this newspaper to explore.)
Whitfield, with his wire-rimmed spectacles and a cell cluttered with drafts of his own plays, carries himself like the valedictorian, with as much humility as he can muster. (He also insists that he’s innocent of murder, which, while perhaps true for the actual man, feels like whipped cream on a movie that’s already sticky-sweet.) Wearing a hoodie knotted prepster-style around his neck, Whitfield dispenses acting advice to the rest of the group. “Walk like a king,” he tells Maclin (fantastic in his first film), and when Maclin does, we understand the change as clearly as if we were attending Domingo’s personal seminar. Honestly, it’s riveting.
The drama is centered on Whitfield and Maclin’s wary rivalry. Whitfield wanted Hamlet; Maclin got the role. Whitfield wants to stage his own serious work; Maclin sways the crew to do a nonsensical mashup of a cowboy/Egyptian/gladiator/Robin Hood/Freddy Krueger sketch with a little time travel thrown in to hold things together. Comedy is hard, we’re told repeatedly. Maybe that’s why this premise — which seems to want laughs — comes off more like an earnest take on “All About Eve.” The treacly piano score is partially at fault, but the clumsy music is also a clue that Kwedar couldn’t commit to a tone. He wants chuckles and serves hugs.
At least we leave convinced of the value of Rehabilitation Through the Arts. Acting encourages these men to get so vulnerable, they acknowledge their tough guy facade is simply the role they were born to play. They’re glad to take on another one — they just needed the opportunity.
R. At AMC Georgetown 14 and Landmark E Street Cinema. Contains bawdy language. 107 minutes.
