NICKEL BOYS

Director: RaMell Ross
Starring: Ethan Harisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Daveed Diggs, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger

Colson Whitehead won the Pulitzer-Prize for his novel “The Nickel Boys.” Whitehead is one of few authors to win the Pulitzer Prize twice. His other win was for “The Underground Railroad,” which was made into a limited series for Amazon Prime. With “The Nickel Boys”, he continues to tackle a tough subject based on a real tragedy. Nickel Boys refers to the young men at Nickel Academy, a tough reform school in Florida. The film centers on Elwood Curtis (Herisse) who was a quiet and shy high school kid and had his eyes set on attending a local tech college. That all changes after the police pick him up for hitchhiking. They see him as a “defiant one” and send him to Nickel where a young man “works to reform himself from sunrise to sunset.” They’re treated like members of the military with communal sleeping areas, hard labor, and drill sergeant style instructors. Behind closed doors is where the trauma happens as they’re actually treated like slaves as they’re literally whipped, put in a sweat room, and abused. This only happens to the Black boys as the white boys are given special privileges to play football and wear jeans. It’s there where Elwood meets Turner (Wilson). They becomes friends and help each other try to survive their time at Nickel Academy. In theaters

Here’s my review