Too often, great books get turned into lousy movies. “Nickel Boys” is one of those.
Based on Colson Whitehead’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, it tells the story of a smart young man named Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse), whose life is changed for the worse when he’s caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. As punishment, he’s sentenced to a brutal reform school called Nickel Academy. There, he becomes friends with Turner (Brandon Wilson), who has an impressive combination of brains and confidence. That companionship is what keeps the twosome alive in the segregated south of the sixties, through a combination of resolute optimism (Elwood) and realism about the outside world (Turner).
Unfortunately, writer/director RaMell Ross has turned Whitehead’s novel in a ponderous, self-indulgent piece of movie-making. He used shaky point-of-view camera angles that rarely included anything but closeups of the boys or narrow perspectives of the world they grew up in. Ross also inserted random bits of stock footage that aren’t necessarily related to the story when they’re dropped in, including several clips of Apollo 8 (which circled the moon) and the Sidney Poitier/Tony Curtis movie, “The Defiant Ones.”
Though Herisse and Wilson do the best they can with their characters, the real bright spot in “Nickel Boys” is Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Elwood’s grandmother, who raised him in Tallahassee. Her connection and caring in his younger years build to a heartbreaking moment when she finally goes to visit him at Nickel Academy. As she always does, Ellis-Taylor owns the moment perfectly.
Disappointingly, I found the film version of Whitehead’s enthralling novel quite boring, so I can only give it a 4 out of 10. Opens Friday in theaters.