Nickel Boys – Raw Jim Crow Era Movie Based on Real Atrocities

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Nickel Boys Review

The history of our country isn’t always pretty, and it isn’t all in our history books. And a new film from Orion Pictures, Nickel Boys is bringing up a darker part of history that some would like to forget. The movie takes you through hope, pain, loss of innocence, and tragedy all told through the perspective of two young Black men in a reformation program in Florida in the 1960s.

Nickel Boys Review

Nickel Boys follows two Black teenage boys, Elwood and Turner, who are sent to the Nickel Academy in Florida. Elwood, a young man who’s on his way to college takes a ride from a stranger only to be sentenced to the reformation camp as a car thief. Despite his only real crime being a Black man in the South. We are never really told what Turner did to get sent to Nickel this time, or the first time that he escaped from. But the two teens quickly form a bond, and try to work their way out of the academy despite all of the abuse and barbaric treatment they are given.

The Nickel Academy is based on the real-life Dozier School for Boys and the horrors that survivors experienced there. Nickel Boys spans the lifetime of Elwood from when he was young, his time at the Nickel Academy, and later the discovery of the bodies on the campus. All things that happened surround Dozier School for Boys. While fictional, Nickel Boys based most of its story (in the book and film) on actual accounts of survivors. And highlights the inequality on the campus and the atrocities that happened at Dozier from 1900 to 2013 to children as young as six years old.

Nickel Boys Review

Nickel Boys isn’t an easy movie to watch. It takes the brutality of the Jim Crow South and puts it squarely in your face. And while some audience members may ask why movies like this need to be made, its still a history that needs to be taught and understood if we as a nation are going to grow and become better. It’s in that uncomfortable feeling that you can question why this happened, what could have been for these boys, and what still needs to change.

The movie takes you on a ride through history, through emotions, and the weight of it all. Flipping between the perspectives of both of the main characters, you see a bit the life and brutality they both had to face. It puts you directly in their shoes through their lives and the loss of the innocence and naivety that the institutionalized violence against Black bodies quickly causes.

Nickel Boys will be in theaters in Metro Detroit later this month.

Overall Rating

Three and a Half Stars Review

About Nickel Boys

Nickel Boys

Elwood Curtis’s college dream shatters alongside a two-lane Florida highway. Bearing the brunt of an innocent misstep, he’s sentenced to the netherworld of Nickel Academy, a brutal reformatory sunk deep in the Jim Crow South. He encounters another ward, the seen-it-all Turner. The two Black teens strike up an alliance: Turner dispensing fundamental tips for survival, Elwood, clinging to his optimistic worldview. Backdropped by the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, Elwood and Turner’s existence appear worlds away from Rev. Martin Luther King’s burnished oratory. Despite Nickel’s brutality, Elwood strives to hold onto his humanity, awakening a new vision for Turner.

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