Nickel Boys

Rare is the film of a major book that maintains the power and precision of its source material while also generating its own singular aesthetic. Yet this extraordinary realization by RaMell Ross (Hale County This Morning, This Evening) of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel, about two Black teenagers who become wards of a barbaric juvenile reformatory in Jim Crow-era Florida, achieves just this. In breakout performances that cut to the bone, Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson play Elwood and Turner, whose close friendship helps sustain their hope even as the horrors mount around them at the Nickel Academy. Inspired by actual events, Nickel Boys sets the beauty of the natural world against the cruel realities of American racism, and confirms Ross’s status as a visionary cinematic artist.