NICKEL BOYS
Starring: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
Director: RaMell Ross
ADRIANO
A soaring ambition from debut director RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys is a staggering and profound accomplishment. I surprisingly adjusted quickly to its first-person perspective, allowing the film to use its experimental narrative to avoid any of the trappings we may be used to from films that tackle historical atrocities. If anything, Nickel Boys feels like an antithesis to black trauma porn, instead coming across as a beautiful film about friendship and survival through choosing love over despair. I can see some struggling with the structure, but if you can get sucked into this one-of-a-kind experience, it'll be worthwhile.
AMARÚ
Nickel Boys is a creative feast to witness due to the visual choices director RaMell Ross uses to relay the harrowing situation of titular characters, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson). The alternating first-person perspective is a powerful tool used to get through a fairly tough watch - tough in both its content and pacing. It’s a lot watching another movie about the atrocities of this country’s past coupled with watching a personal day-to-day-in-the-life narrative; however, the brilliant performances and inspired direction make this one-time watch a must-see experience.
QUENTIN
Writer-director RaMell Ross deserves immense credit for having the balls to attempt something as incredibly ambitious as Nickel Boys because it truly is refreshing to see an innovative approach to filmmaking. That said, his choice to root this adaptation in a first-person perspective (amongst other flourishes) didn’t work for me. Like, at all. It’s disorienting and often confusing, keeping me entirely at arm’s length from what should have been an emotionally moving story. It’s an overlong and arduous film that would play better during an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture than at multiplexes. “A for effort,” as they say…
