Nickel Boys (2024) is directed by RaMell Ross and stars Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Gralen Bryant Banks, Bryant Tardy, Luke Tennie, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, Trey Perkins, Ethan Cole Sharp, Sam Malone, Najah Bradley, and Ja’Quan Monroe-Henderson. Based on the novel by Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys takes place in the 1960s and follows Elwood (Herisse), a quiet, hardworking black student who is mistaken as a car thief on his way to college. Despite his pleas of innocence, Elwood is sentenced to attend “The Dozier School for Boys,” a reform school in Southern Florida. After adjusting to the school’s unequal treatment of its black students, Elwood finds solace in Turner (Wilson), his only classmate willing to show kindness. As their friendship grows, so does the violence toward the school’s black students. Together, the two friends search for a way to escape Dozier before they become yet another of its forgotten victims.

The subdued and sometimes even strangely sensual (even though there’s no romance whatsoever) lead performances by Ethan Herisse & Brandon Wilson aren’t perfect, but it’s clear that these are the exact performances Ross wanted them to give. There’s an almost dreamlike quality to the film’s tone – something that’s akin to an imperfect memory. When you look at these performances as someone’s staggered memory of what was done/said as opposed to the exact reality, they play much better. This is also supported by the choice to tell the entire story by shifting between the first-person perspectives of the two main characters. Seeing everything solely through their eyes allows things to feel like “experiences” as opposed to “events.” When films show things from a third-person perspective (as a majority do), we often have a better, more fully formed view of what’s happening. With first-person storytelling, the film loses a more traditional perspective but gains a deeper, truer connection to the characters and their hardships. 

Ross continually uses this unconventional choice of perspective to its full effect. For example, the somewhat contained nature of what the viewer knows/understands allows Ross to pull off a surprisingly effective twist that would have otherwise felt obvious from the get-go. This perspective also allows the strong supporting cast to do a lot of impressive facial/physical acting. The way the story is told doesn’t allow us to understand these characters through dialogue, so it’s a relief that the supporting cast is up to the task and then some. Ross’ use of first-person is so good that he’s able to stage the only scene I can remember that shows the viewer the same line of dialogue twice but from two different perspectives, and it actually works. It made me realize how seeing a face behind a certain set of words can drastically change their meaning/feeling. 

Although the film tackles little new in the realm of the tragedies and hardships African Americans have faced throughout history, the story is structured in a way that makes these themes/ideas feel fresh. The limited first-person perspective causes the viewer to never be entirely sure of what’s going on behind the scenes – something that makes the climactic reveal all the more horrifying. It’s clear that something is going on, but the film chooses to let its horrors boil over in a disturbing tsunami as opposed to dishing them out at a more consistent pace. The film is smart enough to know that it only needs to horrify us once with the evils of racism to get its point across, so it intelligently makes the moment count. If the film instead chose to split this impact into multiple (and inevitably lesser) sequences that all said the same thing, the film’s message would feel like a preachy dud. Most people agree that racism in America was/is (for sure “was”) horrible beyond words, but anyone who isn’t a lost cause already agrees with that. Instead of simply trying to tell us that racism is bad, it intelligently focuses on the more human costs of that kind of behavior. In other words, it dials things in. Instead of being about how racism is generally bad, it commits to showing how it affects the characters on an individual level. Instead of trying to disingenuously distill the collective experience of racism into one story, it stays more or less focused on a specific form of racism. Exploring the horrors of racism in a general sense is something the audience has seen hundreds of times before, but if a film can zoom in on one specific avenue of the subject, it breeds more complex and original ideas. 

Overall, Nickel Boys is one of the more complex and challenging racially-themed movies I’ve seen in a while. That being said, I’m not certain this is very accessible to most audiences. It’s not that the film is too violent or the story is confusing, it’s that Ross’ unique choice of perspective and story structure may fail to impress audiences that crave more visceral thrills. That being said, I don’t really understand someone who would watch this kind of movie expecting it to be as straightforward as a Marvel film. The overall tone wasn’t my favorite, but there’s nothing objectively wrong with it – it’s clear that this is exactly what Ross was going for. It won’t crack my top 5 movies of the year, but it’s got a good shot at making the top 10. B+