Film

Nickel Boys

Name: Nickel Boys
Genre: Drama, History
Released: 2024
Cast: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Gralen Bryant Banks

Period drama
Very dark

A tough, precise look at friendship and survival in a brutal Florida reform school during the 1960s. Director RaMell Ross makes you feel the grinding weight of institutional cruelty through the bond between two boys. Essential, difficult, and visually inventive—a film that stays with you.

TMDb rating

3.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a patient, deeply humane story about two boys holding onto each other inside an institution built to break them, and you don't mind sitting with its grief.

Skip it if you need brisk plotting to keep you going, since this moves slowly through long, hushed passages that linger on small moments and can feel withholding.

What it asks of you: Around two hours and twenty minutes of patient, mostly somber watching, with long held silences and a tone that stays heavy rather than lifting into relief.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Moonlight2016

Three-part portrait of a Black man's life shaped by violence, poverty, and love. Like Nickel Boys, it finds grace and tenderness within confinement, and trusts its audience to read between the silences.

But Deliberately paced and elliptical; some find the fragmented narrative frustrating rather than poetic.

The Innocent2022

Spanish film about a wrongly imprisoned man and the bonds forged in prison cells. Shares Nickel Boys' focus on institutional dehumanization and the friendships that survive it, with similar emotional intelligence.

But Slower burn than most prison dramas; subtitles required; the ending may feel unresolved to some.

The Shawshank Redemption1994

The gold standard of institutional-survival films. Nickel Boys channels the same belief in friendship as a form of resistance, though with darker historical stakes and no fairy-tale escape.

But A bit more conventional in structure than Nickel Boys; you likely already know the broad shape of this story.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Nickel Boys

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Killing of Two Lovers2021

Both are formally inventive films that use composition and editing to convey what characters cannot speak. Both trust you to feel rather than explain.

Utah indie about a man in crisis navigating family, faith, and his own violence. Its formal precision—every frame composed, every moment earned—matches Nickel Boys' visual rigor and emotional reserve.

But Minimalist to the point of alienation; some will find it pretentious or emotionally closed-off.

Concrete Cowboy2020

Two young Black men navigate family and community in North Philadelphia. Shares Nickel Boys' commitment to showing interiority and dignity in lives the system treats as disposable.

But The tonal shifts between family drama and street narrative feel inconsistent to some viewers.

Incendies2010

Denis Villeneuve's devastating look at cycles of violence and the bonds of family tested by history. Like Nickel Boys, it refuses easy catharsis and trusts you to sit with moral complexity.

But Extremely dark subject matter (Middle East conflict); the final revelation divides audiences on whether it's profound or manipulative.

The Florida Project2017

Childhood and poverty in modern Florida, shot with warmth and specificity. Shares Nickel Boys' refusal to make suffering exploitative, finding small joys within hard circumstances.

But Plotless slice-of-life approach frustrates viewers who need traditional narrative structure and resolution.

Just Mercy2019

True story of a lawyer fighting wrongful convictions in Alabama. Addresses systemic racism in the carceral system with accessible narrative, though less formally experimental than Nickel Boys.

But Leans toward courtroom-drama comfort; the message sometimes feels more important than the characters, and the ending offers more justice than history allows.

The Salt of Life2011

Both find profound meaning in quotidian friendship and ordinary resistance; both are elegies for dignity within systems designed to erase it.

Italian neorealist gem (Vittorio De Sica's final film) about friendship and mortality in working-class Rome. Like Nickel Boys, it privileges small moments of human connection as the antidote to systematic indifference.

But 1960s European cinema moves by different rules; if you expect plot, this meditative portrait of two men will feel like nothing happens.