Nickel Boys
“Through a powerful friendship, Nickel Boys showcases two distinct approaches to combating oppression.”
Title: Nickel Boys (2024)
Director: RaMell Ross 👨🏾🇩🇪🇺🇸
Writers: RaMell Ross 👨🏾🇩🇪🇺🇸 based on the novel by Colson Whitehead 👨🏾🇺🇸
Reviewed by Joshua Harris 🧑🏽🌈🇺🇸
Technical: 5/5
In 2018, RaMell Ross premiered his documentary feature Hale County This Morning, This Evening, following the lives of Black folks in Hale County, Alabama. Ross received acclaim for his ability to capture moments of Black life and community in the South that feel almost dreamlike, using silence and human connection to portray resilience, togetherness, and hope.
Now, Ross adapts Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Nickel Boys, bringing his documentary filmmaking skills to the project. He amplifies quiet moments and plays with camera perspective to catch intimate character interactions, offering powerful observations of the late Jim Crow era.
Translated to screen, Nickel Boys is incredibly immersive. The film follows the lives of two teen boys, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson), as they form a friendship at Nickel Academy, an abusive reform school. (Whitehead’s novel is based on a real reform school, Florida’s Dozier School for Boys, where at least 96 Black boys were murdered, and numerous others hurt and brutalized.) A bold first-person camera allows us to see the story through the eyes of its characters, making us directly witness the violence of institutional racism within the school’s carceral system.
Though it’s often graphic and unflinching, Ross’ camera fixates more on the smaller moments of turmoil—Elwood lowering his head, eyes riveted on the ground when he feels overwhelmed; the sight of Elwood’s grandmother wringing her hands when she’s about to convey bad news. The film also weaves footage, photographs, and history throughout, evoking the fragmented nature of memory. Narrative gaps and omissions further underline how abuse fundamentally alters the brain, leaving parts of one’s past lost or forgotten. These creative decisions compel audiences to confront the history of systemic anti-Blackness on deep level that emotionally resonates.
Gender: 3/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE
Sadly, Nickel Boys does not pass the Bechdel Test, but at least it’s unsurprising given the film’s setting of a boys' reform school. The most memorable female character is Hattie, Elwood’s grandmother, portrayed with gentle protectiveness by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. As a woman grieving the death of her husband, yet desperately clinging to hope, Hattie serves as the emotional core of the film. She fiercely tries to shield her grandson from the cruelties that society enacts on Black children and gives brief reflections on hope and equity for Black people in America.
Her musings are intriguing, but we don't hear enough of her perspective, especially when it’s not tied to the men in her life. Nevertheless, Ellis-Taylor’s transcendent performance anchors the film. Her scenes—particularly, a poignant hug between Hattie and Turner—offers much-needed catharsis in a story heavy with trauma.
Race: 5/5
From The Help (2011) to Django Unchained (2012) to 42 (2013), Black trauma, violence, and grief are put on display. Behind such stories, white creatives profit from the exploitation and voyeurism of Black pain, as peddled to primarily white audiences. In Nickel Boys, director Ross, surrounded by other Black filmmakers on his crew, subverts this tradition. And through a unique first-person camera, Ross forces audiences to bear witness to the pain directly rather than passively observe it.
The film also highlights the long-lasting effects of racial violence through an adult Elwood (played by Daveed Diggs). As a hardened man unpacking the emotional aftermath of his time at Nickel Academy, he illustrates how trauma endures. It shapes his identity and relationships—particularly with Denise (Tanyell Weavers) and former classmate, Chickie Pete (Craig Tate).
Mediaversity Grade: B+ 4.33/5
Through the powerful friendship between Elwood and Turner, Nickel Boys showcases two distinct approaches to combating oppression. Elwood, an idealistic young man with a deep belief in justice, passionately commits himself to the civil rights movement. In sharp contrast is Turner, who spent more time at Nickel Academy, and has since become a hardened realist. Wary and disillusioned, Turner is convinced that anti-Blackness is too deeply entrenched in America to ever be truly eradicated or overcome.
Despite bearing the harshest forms of injustice, the duo’s relationship—tender, oppositional, yet hopeful and almost romantic—embodies a sense of community and love. In portraying the power of human connection and Black life under horrific circumstances, Nickel Boys leaves an indelible mark, both as a historical reckoning and an audacious work of Black cinema.
Like Nickel Boys? Try these other titles that tackle systemic racism.
Origin (2023)
Antebellum (2020)
Mudbound (2017)