FILM
NICKEL BOYS
A new angle: Nickel boys Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson).
A COLSON WHITEHEAD ADAPTATION THAT OFFERS A FRESH PERSPECTIVE
★★★★★
OUT 3 JANUARY / CERT 12A / 140 MINS
DIRECTOR
RaMell Ross
CAST
Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
PLOT
In segregated 1960s Florida, young Elwood (Herisse) is wrongfully sent to the Nickel Academy reform school, an effective jail for African-Americans.
THERE MIGHT NOT be anything else like RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys. Adapting the 2019 novel by Colson Whitehead ( best known to most for The Underground Railroad, adapted for TV by Barry Jenkins in 2021), Ross finds an unorthodox approach here: extrapolating the book’s thirdperson narrative into a first-person point-of-view, the camera almost entirely presenting the action as through the eyes of its protagonists. Think Peep Show, but as a serious and urgent drama.