Nickel Boys (2024)

‘Nickel Boys’ Tells a Searing Story in a New, Not Always Successful Way. Formally experimental, ‘Nickel Boys’ strives and sometimes succeeds at being immersive, but can also feel removed from its powerful subject matter. Opening in theaters in limited release on December 20th is ‘Nickel Boys,’ directed by RaMell Ross and starring Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, and Fred Hechinger.

There’s no question that writer-director RaMell Ross’ ‘Nickel Boys,’ which Ross adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ‘The Nickel Boys’ by Colson Whitehead, is a boldly ambitious piece of filmmaking. Ross chooses an experimental way in which to tell the story of two young Black boys who become friends at a horrifying reform school in the Deep South in the 1960s, and like all experiments in narrative and storytelling, it may take the viewer some time to get their bearings.