Review: Nickel Boys (2025)

Nickel Boys

Rating

Director

RaMell Ross

Screenplay

RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes (Book: Colson Whitehead)

Length

2h 20m

Starring

Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Jimmie Fails, Ethan Cole Sharp, Daveed Diggs

MPAA Rating

PG-13

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Review

A terrific story can only take a film so far, it takes great filmmaking to make the material soar and Nickel Boys might be a case in point.

The story is somewhat familiar if unconventional. Based on the historical incidents that took place at Florida’s Dozier School for Boys, author Colin Whitehead took inspiration from the heinous acts that were perpetrated on the residents of the notorious reform school while placing the novel’s characters into a fictional setting. It’s 1962. Elwood Curtis (Ethan Cole Sharp), a good teen with a great future accepts a lift from a stranger on his way to an engineering school where he hopes an education will help him escape the precarious situation he and his grandmother are living in. He never makes it to school and instead is incarcerated at Nickel Academy for being in the wrong place at the wrong time in a stolen car.

There, he meets Turner (Brandon Wilson), a boy who befriends the frightened Elwood and sticks up for him when things are rough but it doesn’t stop the other boys from picking fights and getting each other in trouble as a result. This coming of age story highlights the danger of being Black in Florida in the 1960s while exposing the awful acts perpetrated by figures who were ostensibly there to protect the teens and ensure they improve to the point where they can be released back into society. The focus of the film is on the fast friendship these boys form while occasionally flashing forward to a successful Elwood (Daveed Diggs) trying to eke out a life for himself while memories of his horrendous teen years play out in his head.

Director RaMell Ross, who adapts Whithead’s novel with Joslyn Barnes, is a refreshing new voice in modern cinema. Ross approaches the material from a unique direction. With the help of cinematographer Jomo Fray, he employs first-person perspective through much of the film with the occasional over-the-shoulder shots of his future self and a periodic shifting perspective to put the audience into the uncomfortable position of going through the events with the young protagonist. While the film largely follows Elwood’s viewpoint, it also puts us into Turner’s shoes so that we can see Elwood from someone else’s vantage point. The choice of character to follow doesn’t always make sense in the moment but ultimately knits together perfectly by the film’s conclusion.

First-person camerawork isn’t a new concept. It’s been used for decades with varying degrees of success. What Ross and Fray do is make it feel fresh and exciting. It’s the kind of audacious approach that reminds favorably of technique-defining work such as the Alfred Hitchcock’s use of the dolly zoom in Vertigo or Stanley Kubrick’s employment of Steadicam in The Shining. The successful use of this method will be difficult to top but many future filmmakers will try. If Ross continues to turn out films this unique and compelling, he will join a rare batch of filmmakers whose style is favorably recalled by future film historians.

For many who face discrimination in our supposedly post-racial society, Nickel Boys will be a harsh reminder of how little has changed for Black youths since the days prior to the Civil Rights Act. Elwood is even fascinated with Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent approach to standing up for his rights. It’s a struggle he wants to use in his own experience to empower others but whose circumstances prevent him from becoming more than is expected of him in a particularly racist period in U.S. history. Through his eyes, the audience will see the strength of his convictions and the seeming hopelessness of his situation. It’s a film that reflects the past into a present-day filter. While the viewer has to infer many of those connections, it does not mitigate or undermine its salience from a modern perspective and that’s the beauty and timelessness of this kind of film.