Nickel Boys movie review: Empathy at heart of powerful Oscar contender

One of the great injustices of the 2025 Oscar season is that Nickel Boy missed out on a cinematography nomination.

It has nods in the best picture and adapted screenplay categories so it wasn’t snubbed entirely but it was a shame the Academy didn’t recognise its most potent weapon.

The film’s innovative and effective camera work is worthy of recognition, for not just its gutsy use of first-person perspective but for actually pulling it off. It could’ve come off as gimmicky but instead it envelopes you in the world of the story and its characters.

By putting you in the literal point-of-view of its characters, the film becomes an empathy machine, thrusting you into everything Elwood sees, hears and, ultimately, feels.

Adapted from a seminal novel by the American writer Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys is set in the 1960s in Tennessee and Florida. Elwood is a smart kid whose potential is recognised by his teacher who pulls some strings to get him into an accelerated program at a college nearby.

On his way there on his first day, he hitchhikes a ride with the wrong person at the wrong time. Stung for a crime he didn’t commit, Elwood is sent to a “reform school”, the Nickel Academy.

The onscreen institution is based on the real-life Dozier School for Boys which was closed in 2011 after decades of abuse allegations. Later, forensic teams discovered scores of unmarked graves on the grounds.

Nickel is segregated by race with the non-white boys subjected to shabby conditions and terrible mistreatment while being fed the lie that if they behaved, they could earn their way out.

There’s a hotbox on the roof the superintendent uses to torture “wayward” charges while other kids have “disappeared” such as one kid who refuses to throw his victory in a boxing match against a white opponent.

We see everything through Elwood’s (Ethan Herisse) eyes — the warmth of his grandmother’s (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) home and hug, the multiple bunks in Nickel’s dormitories, the darkness of the whipping room — glimpsing the character only in the reflections of a car mirror.

Then he meets fellow student Turner (Brandon Wilson), and the camera shifts between the two young men, allowing the audience to see Elwood in full.

The camaraderie and the moments of genuine comfort in each other’s company lightens the cruelty of their circumstances.

There are also flashes forward to an older Elwood (Daveed Diggs), an adult in New York City years down the line as he reads news reports of the abuse at Nickel Academy.

First-time narrative feature director RaMell Ross has a confident command on his film, bringing with him the clarity and fire of his documentary-making experience, and an ability to elicit deep compassion from the audience.

There’s almost a relaxed rhythm to it until it escalates and you’re confronted with the truth of the full horrors.

Nickel Boys is a story about great historical injustice that connects directly to the prejudice and violence of 2025 but you get the sense it’s not trying to be didactic. Of course it has a perspective on these points, but it’s also presenting the experiences of people caught in these nets.

By placing the viewer in their shoes, it powerfully advocates for not a political agenda but for empathy and humanity.

Rating: 3.5/5

Nickel Boys is streaming on Prime Video from February 27