Review: “Nickel Boys” is an intimate and potent masterpiece

By Arman Saxena     2/4/25 11:03pm

Score: ★★★★½

Oscar season might have crowned Brady Corbet as the new “great American director” for his ambitiously sprawling “The Brutalist,” but with Nickel Boys — his adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — RaMell Ross stuns us all, staking a bold claim as a visionary, essential voice in American filmmaking. 

This is the same Ross who brought lyricism and humanity to his documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” and “Nickel Boys” proves that his impressionistic, empathetic style can cross over into narrative filmmaking without losing any of its haunting potency. 

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Quite the opposite, in fact: Ross’s signature humanism shines even brighter here. 

Set primarily in the early 1960s, “Nickel Boys” chronicles Elwood (Ethan Herisse), a wide-eyed Black teenager whose dreams of college and civic progress collide headfirst with the brutal reality of Jim Crow Florida. Hitchhiking one day on what should have been his way to a brighter future, Elwood lands in Nickel Academy — a hellish reform school where “rehabilitation” barely masks the cruelty and forced labor inflicted upon the Black boys trapped there. There he meets Turner (Brandon Wilson), whose hard-won cynicism fuels his belief that the system will forever be rigged against them. 

Their tenuous friendship forms the beating heart of Ross’ film, a delicate interplay of hope, despair and the yearning for a future that might validate both perspectives. The biggest revelation of “Nickel Boys” is how Ross manages to merge raw emotional storytelling with the lyrical documentary flourishes that made Hale County so unforgettable. 

Shot entirely through a dynamic first-person perspective, “Nickel Boys” grants the audience an intimacy rarely felt in narrative film. Whether we’re peering up from a cramped bus seat alongside Elwood, glimpsing the reflection of an iron in a sunlit kitchen or leaning over Turner’s shoulder as he trudges through the Nickel Academy’s yard at night, every frame is breathtakingly alive. 

Ross coaxes viewers to inhabit his characters’ anxieties and hopes, creating a personal immediacy that’s both beautiful and jarring — we’re never allowed a comfortable distance from what these boys endure. 

This visual intimacy extends seamlessly to the film’s humane, character-driven center. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s Hattie is a standout, her love and deep reservoir of regret palpable with just a single, long-held look. Her scenes, however brief, encapsulate the film’s ability to weld raw tenderness and seething injustice together, often in the same moment. 

Ethan Herisse’s soulful take on Elwood captures both the wonder and naivete of a teen who still believes in Dr. King’s dream, while Brandon Wilson injects Turner with enough warmth under his cynicism to suggest the possibility of hard-earned transformation. 

The camera’s unwavering closeness makes every performance feel intimate, and that emotional tether lingers long after the credits roll. From a technical standpoint, “Nickel Boys” stands as one of the year’s most exquisitely crafted films. 

The editing laces together daydreams, flashbacks and glimpses of the outside world — its civil rights marches, its NASA rocket launches — into a tapestry of American promise contrasted against the hidden atrocities at Nickel Academy. 

Jomo Fray’s cinematography can pivot from quiet, observational stillness to rapturous, expressionistic passages that evoke the best of Ross’s documentary roots. Adding yet another layer to the film’s sensory tapestry is the score by Scott Alario and Alex Somers, a lush and occasionally glitchy soundscape that pulses with sorrow, resilience and the faint hum of possibility. 

As profoundly moving as “Nickel Boys” is, it also raises a timely critique of America’s cherished narrative of progress. By weaving glimpses of the 1960s civil rights movement together with Nickel’s entrenched violence, Ross underscores the gap between what the country celebrates as forward motion and the everyday brutalities that remain hidden or dismissed. 

One of the film’s most haunting questions is how far we’ve really come when so many of the same systems persist under new names and softened veneers. Elwood believes that radical progress is inevitable; Turner sees only new manifestations of old injustices. 

Neither is entirely wrong and this tension — as relevant today as it was in 1962 — lends “Nickel Boys” a disarming urgency. 

Amid that urgency, Ross insists on capturing moments of quiet grace that elevate this film beyond mere condemnation of systemic violence. 

There are fleeting shots of children at play, a young couple capturing their love in a Photo Booth, the hush of Christmas lights in a welcoming home. These glimpses of life are heartbreakingly precious, underscoring that hope and beauty persist even in places hell-bent on destroying them. 

“Nickel Boys” never preaches, but rather sees, records and ultimately affirms that the everyday joys of marginalized communities are as essential to understanding the world as any major historical event. 

Yet if there is a single, resounding message, it’s that complacency has no place in the American landscape. Nickel Boys calls for the radical action of caring — caring enough to see the bigger picture, to challenge the veneer of progress and to push for meaningful, structural change. Ross doesn’t hand us easy resolutions; rather, he points us toward the fragile, brave alliances that offer real hope. 

Like Elwood and Turner’s bond, there’s a persistent sense that if anything can break these cycles of harm, it’s the solidarity that blossoms despite them. 

With “Nickel Boys”, RaMell Ross delivers what is easily one of the year’s most rapturous and devastating films, a piece that fuses poetry with political commentary, intimacy with epic scope. What begins as an adaptation of a Pulitzer-winning novel transforms into something bolder: a staggering reflection on how much (or how little) has changed for Black Americans since the Jim Crow era, filtered through a camera so personal it nearly dissolves the boundary between subject and viewer. 

By the time the film’s quietly devastating final frames arrive, Ross has redefined what adaptation can be — and solidified his place as a vital figure in American cinema, with an artistry and moral clarity that towers above mere hype.

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