Nickel Boys Review: A Painful and Necessary Masterpiece to Tell an Almost True Story!

When writing this review, we still don’t know if Nickel Boys won an Oscar in the two categories for which it received nominations: Best Film and Best Non-Original Screenplay. However, this movie, directed by RaMell Ross, who made his directorial debut with the previous work, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, which was nominated for best documentary, is destined to make its mark in cinematic history for various reasons. Nickel Boys was released directly on Prime Video on February 27, just days before the Oscars 2025, and this is our review, starting with a summary of the plot followed by our judgment before knowing if the film will win at least one Academy Award. After all, the official trailer is also here. In his first directorial effort, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, RaMell Ross showcased a deeply personal and poetic approach to reality. It is an impressionistic observational documentary, focusing on fleeting moments, details, and unique perspectives on the different journeys of two young African Americans in a town in Alabama. Professional photographer Ross engaged with his characters and subjects by emphasizing the visual aspect, pushing traditional narrative formats, even those of the documentary genre, to the background.

When it came to moving to fiction with the adaptation of an important novel by an award-winning author such as Colson Whitehead (Pulitzer Prize winner for the novel The Underground Railroad, adapted from Barry Jenkins in a miniseries), it could be assumed that the director would opt for a more traditional format. But Ross chose the opposite path, radicalizing his approach even more clarifying that his way of making cinema is personal and that he is not willing to modify it or make it more accessible to the public Whitehead’s novel tells one of those terrible, brutal and unique stories that determine the history of an entire country. And they determine it, first of all, because it has been hidden for a long time and, subsequently, for the almost material impossibility (beyond all morals) to assimilate it, to understand it, to forgive it. For more than a century, the Florida Nickel Academy reformatory for young blacks has become a horror chamber where its inhabitants were systematically subjected to all types of sexual, mental, and physical abuse. A methodical and perfectly systematized extermination that has transformed the center into a real death factory. The reformatory is called Nickel, but it is a reference to the real Dozier School for children that has operated for just over a century in Florida. This institute was known for the rapes, murders, torture and multiple aberrations that occurred there, and only in 2011 was it definitively closed.

Nickel Boys Review: The Story Plot

We are in Tallahassee, Florida, in the 1960s. Elwood Curtis is a good, kind boy—scholarly and passionate. He has lived with his beloved grandmother, Hattie, since his mother, Evelyn, abandoned him as a child. But as respectful and polite as he may be, if you’re a black boy in the United States in the sixties, your life is still subject to daily and unimaginable injustices. It may seem fine when they catch you at a protest for black rights. However, if one day, after earning a place at a polytechnic for blacks, you accept a ride to college from a man—also black—whom you don’t know and who has stolen a car, when they catch you, it’s certain you’ll be arrested and sentenced without much bureaucracy. Fortunately, Elwood is only 16 when this happens, so he is sent to a reformatory for minors, the Nickel Academy, which is obviously segregated between whites and blacks (Hispanics are grouped with blacks in uncertain situations). Nickel is a dreadful place for black boys, who are routinely beaten, abused, and sometimes even brutally killed. Here, Elwood tries to stay on the right path, hoping to escape quickly, but soon discovers there is no way to avoid the abuse.

Elwood finds the only light in this darkness in Turner, another African American prisoner from Nickel, who seems to truly understand Elwood’s feelings. The whole film, aside from clips featuring historical images related to Martin Luther King, the NASA space race, or other significant events and films with Sidney Poitier, is shot subjectively. Until Elwood meets Turner, the camera only captures his perspective, showing his face solely in reflections or photographs. After their meeting, moments seen from Elwood’s point of view alternate with those captured through Turner’s perspective, emphasizing that they are the unequivocal protagonists. The perspective remains subjective, even when the shot widens to include the neck and hair of the protagonist. Additionally, the flash-forward scenes that weave through the story set in Nickel reveal Elwood Curtis’s future: in the new millennium, he runs a moving company called Ace, which is named after the highest hierarchical level of Nickel’s detainees who entered as “larvae” and emerged as “aces.” Finally, it is revealed that an investigation has begun into the horrors that transpired in that place of terror and torture.

Nickel Boys Review and Analysis

The film is adapted from the book of the same name written by Colson Whitehead, who won his second Pulitzer Prize for it, following the prize he received for The Underground Railroad, which also inspired an unmissable TV series available on Prime Video. It’s unmissable as long as you have the strength and courage to confront a fragment of what has been the history of African Americans in the USA until recently. Racism in America is clearly not a resolved issue, and those who think it is may not grasp the harsh reality that Black Americans often must navigate. However, what occurred until a few decades ago would today seem to fit the definition of dystopian reality. Nickel Boys is not a true story, but it is inspired by the actual history of a real reformatory, the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida, which operated from January 1, 1900, to June 30, 2011, where it was revealed that unspeakable crimes were committed against the mostly Black boys who were detained there.

RaMell Ross‘s choice to shoot the entire film subjectively, while also serving the narrative of the finale, is ideal for allowing viewers to empathize with those who are forced to endure various wrongs, abuses, and injustices. Most of these fit well within the infamous Jim Crow laws, which granted authorities the power to treat Black individuals as if they were little more than beasts. (On this topic, we recommend watching the first season of “Them” on Prime Video as well.) At the end of the film, which we won’t spoil for you, a bitterness lingers that is hard to swallow: a feeling of disbelief and sadness that is likely to persist for days. For us, this outcome certainly warrants an Oscar. Penned by RaMell Ross (Hale County This Morning, This Evening, Independent Lens) and Joslyn Barnes (Touch of Stranger, Bàttu, Harvest), Nickel Boys immerses us in one of many horror stories that, despite being familiar to many, have been buried for years. Instead of crafting a pamphlet filled with dialogues about social justice, civil rights, and freedom, its writers offer something far more impactful: they recount firsthand, through the perspectives of Elwood and Turner, the daily descent into hell at the Nickel Academy.

Portrayed as a respectable institution aiming to instill discipline and education in unruly youth, the place resembles a Soviet gulag more than a college. African American and Latin teenagers are treated as slaves or exploited in underground fights, where winning or losing can cost them their lives. Some are sexually abused, and anyone who breaks the rules, no matter how minor, can be whipped to death. It’s a disturbing environment where the viewer experiences the same level of discomfort as the protagonists. While the appearances of Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson are always viewed through reflections or from a subjective perspective, the portrayals in Nickel Boys are outstanding. Ethan Herisse is depicted as a quiet, introverted young man, with a stony expression but eyes that reveal a depth of understanding known only to us as we follow his journey. In contrast, Brandon Wilson is presented as a friendly, extroverted, and carefree boy; however, beneath his smile lies profound pain and resignation.

Every time they interact on screen and exchange views, we discover the vulnerability and innocence that they do not allow themselves to express. We understand what one does for the other without saying anything or expecting anything in return. “Nickel Boys” has a hypnotic visual style. Thanks to its fragmented narration and play of perspectives, the story aims to confuse us and immerses us in the psyche of its protagonists. Following in the footsteps of Michael Haneke, the director understands that the worst type of violence occurs outside the frame and is often inflicted by omission. At the same time, Ross knows when, where, and how to emphasize moments to shock us or what information to withhold to distress us, inviting us to imagine scenarios worse than we think. This forces the viewer to scrutinize every shot of the film, waiting for danger to nest in the smallest corner or to catch any hint of threat in the sounds outside its field of vision.

When you start to believe that you have grasped how style reflects thought, “Nickel Boys” discards Elwood, who forges a fraternal friendship with Turner (Brandon Wilson). Here, the film suddenly shifts perspective, placing Turner in the foreground and moving Elwood to the background. This shift initiates a rebound that gradually blurs the formal contours of the work, flattening the time coordinates by positioning the past and present in a straight line, no longer vertical or hierarchical. “Nickel Boys” thus transforms into a flow, incorporating archival inserts, digital images, notes, and research materials about the occurrences at the Nickel Academy. It unexpectedly shifts into the future of an adult Elwood, positioning himself behind us, not fully subjective but semi-subjective, perhaps to suggest an extracorporeal experience— a state of translation regarding his own experience or personal past. Is this a discussion of the guilt of the “survivor”? The re-emergence of pain that may have never ceased to torment the soul?

Almost entirely shot from the protagonist’s perspective and then shifting to the co-star who plays a role in the second half of the film, Nickel Boys appears to encourage viewers to experience the story through the eyes of the main character, Elwood. We witness what he saw as a child, as a teenager, and as a young victim of abuse and mistreatment. Nickel Boys is a raw film that effectively conveys the brutality of what occurred in the Nickel reformatory without relying on graphic images because the camera consistently moves as Elwood’s character does, capturing his viewpoint. The narrative is often entrusted more to the sounds emanating from behind those rooms where, in the dead of night, torture is inflicted on those who dared to defy the rules, even when those rules are broken for the most legitimate reasons.

At the Nickel Academy, young people forced to serve years in that terrible place must live in shadows, in silence, without ever being able to speak up, trapped in a flat, sterile, and lifeless existence, since that is the only way to avoid being mistaken for someone deserving punishment, someone who must be taught how to behave. This is the role of actor Hamish Linklater, who embodies the crimes and injustices committed over the years, which often resulted in countless victims. Young people who are gone but have never truly left that reformatory. Elwood’s eyes reflect initial naivety and unawareness, coming into conflict with Turner’s, reigniting in both the hope of finding peace and tranquility in the very place that had ripped them from their families and lives. However, the film also conveys resignation and endurance amid the anguish of living forever within those walls stained with the blood of hundreds of innocents.

Taking into consideration what happened to Elwood and describing how the world was changing outside the reformatory, Nickel Boys also addresses the struggles for the civil rights of African Americans—rights that were continually trampled on and found their most intense expression within the Nickel Academy through violence, deceit, and brutal racial hatred. Nickel Boys, focusing on the protagonist Elwood for a few moments and also incorporating Turner’s perspective, appears to urge the viewer towards empathy and identification. However, the result is more confusion regarding its purpose and narrative value. Empathy is evoked both through the drama portrayed and through the acting, the script, and those rare moments when the gaze of the two protagonists reveals their suffering as they seek warmth and brief moments of respite. The hope of being able, even for a moment, to forget where they are.

The choice of direction, therefore, is certainly rare in audiovisual products and does not seem to give the film that extra depth, which, considering the uniqueness of the machine movements and the recovery, should have emerged. The surrender is the most poetic moment, offering moments of breath but ultimately fading in the second part, when visual suggestion, primarily that of stark realism, is introduced. Although some initial scenes lend the film a more artistic, captivating, and elegiac tone, these feel self-contained; they seem excessive and then suddenly vanish in the second half. The performances of the two lead actors are extraordinary. Ethan Erisse portrays Brandon Wilson, a character bound by a friendship that can save their lives and propels them to dream of a different existence. Turner guides Elwood through the dangers and days they will face together. Meanwhile, Elwood represents for Turner that alluring force from the outside, driven by a denied freedom and a profound sense of justice.

Nickel Boys Movie Review: The Last Words

Nickel Boys is a powerful and visually captivating film that transforms the narration into an immersive and painful experience. RaMell Ross radicalizes his approach, avoiding melodrama and exhibitionism to present a story of injustice through an intimate and deeply moral lens. He constructs Nickel Boys entirely around an intuitive direction that effectively comments on individual pain and collective memory. In the end, as he opens up the narrative, we recognize that we are witnessing a truly intelligent and remarkable film. Nickel Boys is one to watch during the upcoming awards season. Produced by Brad Pitt’s production company, which has long chosen socially committed stories for Academy submission, it offers a narrative of personal growth and drama where the viewer holds the power. The director’s unique choices are crucial in helping those with the privilege to watch connect with the story: the audience. Delicately interpreted, though lengthy and deliberate, Nickel Boys tells a dramatically real story, fictionalized yet grounded, never delving into excessively violent details while effectively conveying the drama of what is left unsaid.

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

Directed By: RaMell Ross

Where To Watch: Prime Video

Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4.5/5 (four and a half stars)

Nickel Boys Review: A Painful and Necessary Masterpiece to Tell an Almost True Story! - Filmyhype

Director: RaMell Ross

Date Created: 2025-02-27 14:12

Editor's Rating:
4.5

Pros

• The crudeness with which he explores themes already known without falling into pamphleting or sensationalism
• The game of perspectives: RaMell Ross uses a fragmented and subjective visual narration that involves the viewer in the psyche of the protagonists
• Horror is often suggested more than shown, amplifying the sense of unease and involving the viewer in building off-screen violence

Cons

• First-person and subjective storytelling may be frustrating for some viewers
• The fragmented and poetic approach could be difficult for those who prefer a more linear and traditional structure