Nickel Boys (12A)

Elwood Curtis is wrongly accused of stealing a car and he is sent to Nickel Academy to recalibrate his outlook on life. Behind closed doors, Elwood and other residents suffer humiliation at the hands of educators including brutal corporal punishment. Elwood forms a close friendship with a boy named Jack Turner and they draw strength from each other to survive the intimidation and violence meted out by corrupt administrators.

LondonNet Film Review

Nickel Boys (12A) Film Review from LondonNet

The most heartbreaking chapters of human history teach us that we possess a boundless capacity to inflict unspeakable suffering on each other under the guise of progress, political dogma or religious zeal. Where darkness threatens to extinguish glimmers of hope, we endure. Nickel Boys is a harrowing drama, skilfully adapted for the screen by director RaMell Ross and co-writer Joslyn Barnes from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which is based on a real-life reform school in Florida where historical allegations of abuse were confirmed by the discovery of unmarked graves using ground-penetrating radar…

An elegant screenplay glides back and forth across three decades to glimpse life behind closed doors at the fictional Nickel Academy and the aftermath for one traumatised survivor as dead bodies are unearthed and shell-shocked authorities initiate a full investigation. Ross hits a stylistic home run by depicting events from the first-person perspective of two incarcerated protagonists in claustrophobic 4:3 widescreen ratio, which concentrates attention in the middle of the screen. Lead actors Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson are seldom glimpsed together on screen since one of them is effectively behind the camera as the point-of-view and present only by voice. It’s an intensely immersive and visceral experience that audiences could find deeply unsettling.

Teenager Elwood Curtis (Herisse) lives in racially segregated 1962 Tallahassee with his grandmother Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) as the Civil Rights Movement gathers momentum under impassioned activists including Martin Luther King Jr. High school teacher Mr Hill (Jimmie Fails) has high hopes for Elwood but the boy’s future is cruelly curtailed after he is wrongly accused of being an accomplice to the theft of a car. As a minor, he is dispatched to Nickel Academy.

Sadistic white administrator Spencer (Hamish Linklater) and staff including henchman Harper (Fred Hechinger) separate the black intake and exploit them as slave labour. Anyone who refuses to bend to Spencer’s will suffers horrific corporal punishment in a torture chamber outhouse. Elwood is befriended by another boy, Jack Turner (Wilson), who explains there are four ways to escape Nickel: serve time or turn 18, wait for the court to intervene, die (probably at the hands of the staff), or run and hope the guards don’t shoot you in the back.

Nickel Boys is bravura filmmaking on a par with Oscar winner The Zone Of Interest, which venerates the dauntless human spirit through a different lens. Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray orchestrate dazzling single-shot sequences like Elwood and Turner staring up at their reflections in a mirrored ceiling. The 140-minute running time is excessive for sustained sensorial overload but the script remains laser-focused on sparking vital, animated conversation about forgotten black history and exploitation.

– Sarah Lee