Nickel Boys and The Fire Inside: Reviewing Amazon’s Awards Season Hopefuls

Casey Medeiros ’25 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

As Awards Season begins and the end of the year approaches, studios are now releasing their final awards contenders. Amazon Studios has two interesting and very different films vying for awards and coming to theatres in December: Nickel Boys and The Fire Inside.

Nickel Boys is the narrative debut of acclaimed filmmaker RaMell Ross, known for his Oscar-nominated 2018 experimental documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening. Nickel Boys is adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which is based on the real story of the Dozier School for Boys and explores the abuse that young Black boys experienced at a reform school in the 1960s. The film won two Gotham Awards, including Best Director for RaMell Ross, and was additionally nominated for Best Feature at both the Gothams and the Independent Spirit Awards. More importantly, the film received a nomination in the “Best Motion Picture – Drama” category at the Golden Globes, and 5 nominations at the Critics’ Choice Awards (including Picture, Director, and Supporting Actress), which are more notable precursors for the Oscars. So after premiering to critical acclaim at Telluride earlier this year and with the nominations it has already received, it would seem likely that this would be a surefire Best Picture contender. However, the film would be one of the most ambitiously experimental and unusual Best Picture nominees in recent memory, as RaMell Ross makes an extremely bold creative choice: Nickel Boys is filmed entirely in POV perspective shots.

The film follows Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse), a politically active and intelligent African-American student. After being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he finds himself unfairly separated from his mother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) and placed into a correctional school in Florida called Nickel Academy. At Nickel, there are boys of all ages and they are segregated by race, with the white boys getting special privileges and better treatment. The boys are taught things like basic math and are forced to do hard labor, and they are routinely subjected to severe punishments and abuse. Elwood is told he must always say “Yes, sir” when spoken to, and he quickly learns he needs to endure and survive these harsh conditions. Elwood befriends Turner (Brandon Wilson), who has a much more pragmatic view of their situation than Elwood. As Elwood talks about how what Nickel is doing is against the law and of potential ways to get out, Turner tells him there are only four ways out of Nickel: serve your time/age out, appeal to the courts, run, or die. But Elwood believes that they can stand up for themselves and create a fifth way to get out: raise awareness of the abuses and get rid of Nickel. Inspired by the Civil Rights leaders that he idolizes, he starts to make note of the things he witnesses and of the boys that are at Nickel, including the ones who were taken for punishment and never came back, in hopes of getting a chance to slip it to somebody on the outside.

The POV storytelling device could have very easily felt like a gimmick, but RaMell Ross somehow manages to make it work and maintain a unique artistic vision throughout, as well as creating a harrowing and immersive cinematic experience. Elwood tells Turner at one point in the film that if he looks the other way, he is as implicated as everybody at Nickel who allows these abuses to take place. This mentality is something that the first-person perspective choice confronts head-on: the film switches between POV shots from Elwood and Turner’s perspectives, and this forces the audience to see the world and their experience through their eyes. We are placed directly in their shoes, and what happens to them happens to us. When they turn their heads to look at something, the camera mimics their head movement and moves with them. When characters talk to them, they talk directly to the camera, directly to us. While this choice is a little disorienting at first and makes the film harder to get into, and will surely repel a lot of viewers who aren’t willing to engage with the film, over time you start to sink into what the film is doing and become immersed in their perspectives. Then, when the film does decide to break its established storytelling rules with something like the use of an archival footage montage reminiscent of the works of Arthur Jafa, it makes the moment even more powerful. The film also goes against the common idea that “real life” is too mundane and boring for film and instead aims to give the audience the feeling of real life at every turn to make them feel the weight of the events of the plot. The pacing is patient and really takes its time, sometimes bordering on feeling aimless, and with a 140-minute runtime the film might be a little too patient to justify the length. However, when the overwhelmingly powerful ending occurs, it works in large part because of how immersed in the feeling of realism the audience is. 

The film is also fantastic on a craft level. Not only is the massive challenge of maintaining a first-person perspective for an entire film impressive, but the visuals themselves are stunning. The film is beautifully shot and creates a number of poetic and striking images, and the cinematography is definitely deserving of awards consideration. The acting is also deserving of awards, as the performances are great across the board. 

Conversely, there is The Fire Inside, a mostly conventional boxing movie based on the real story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields, arguably the greatest female boxer ever. The film is the first feature film directed by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rachel Morrison, with a script written by Barry Jenkins. The film premiered to a positive reception at the Toronto International Film Festival, and it received two nominations at the Gothams – Best Supporting Performance for Brian Tyree Henry and the Breakthrough Performer Award for Ryan Destiny. 

The film begins with a scene of a young Claressa Shields, who lives in Flint, Michigan, and turns up at a local gym run by former boxer Jason Crutchfield. She wants him to train her to box, but he tells her that they don’t train girls at the gym. But after noticing how quiet she is, and after displaying some potential, he considers training her. He asks his wife what she thinks about the idea, and she mentions that Claressa might be looking for an escape from her rough home life. The movie jumps to 5 years later, where we see that 16-year-old Claressa (Ryan Destiny) has been trained by Jason and competes in the 2012 National Championships, where she wins and earns an opportunity to compete in the Olympic trials. However, since Jason isn’t an officially sanctioned US boxing coach and can’t afford to travel to the trials in China, she has to box without him coaching ringside. As a result, while she does qualify, she does not perform as well as she usually does. The movie then follows her in the leadup to her gold-medal run in the 2012 London Olympics, where she balances training while still being a high-school student. She also stays with Jason and his family after her mom kicks her out following a fight, and around the same time her father gets out of prison and her sister tells her she is pregnant. Jason remarks that she has “seen more in 16 years of life than most people see in their entire lifetimes”, and with her family needing financial support, Claressa becomes even more motivated to get the gold and all of the endorsements that come with it. This part of the film leading up to the gold-medal fight follows many of the standard beats of this kind of boxing movie (training montage and all), but even though it has a predictable plot it is still entertaining and well-done.

This changes in the third act though, where we get a hard look at what her life is like after winning the gold medal. She doesn’t get any endorsements, she isn’t able to financially support her family, and she questions what her win was really for. When searching for endorsements, she is told that people just don’t want to see their sisters and daughters beating each other up, and that “for women, it’s not just about how skilled you are”. She is also told that people expect female athletes to behave a certain way and that she has to “play the game”, and she grapples with trying to stay true to herself while also being successful financially. It is also in this section that the setting of Flint starts to become more important to the story. Early in the film Claressa is told to “represent” and “show them how we do it in Flint”, and the community around her almost acts as another character in the story. This look at her relationship to her hometown as well as a realistic look at her life after the Olympics as a female boxer helps give the film real depth and elevate it beyond the formulaic aspects.

In addition to this intriguing third act, the film is also very well-made across the board. Barry Jenkins’ script is very good, and Rachel Morrison does a good job directing her first feature. The two performances from Ryan Destiny and Brian Tyree Henry are also fantastic, and the movie kind of hinges on how good their performances are. So while it’s sometimes disappointing that the film curtails potential character moments for them to do more standard boxing film beats, Destiny and Henry’s great performances as well as solid filmmaking keep the film engaging. This is why despite the fact it’s not reinventing the wheel for this kind of sports movie, The Fire Inside remains a very solid and enjoyable version of one.

As for Awards Season, while The Fire Inside is solidly made with two great performances at the center of it, there just isn’t as much awards buzz around it as there is for Nickel Boys. While this is a little surprising given just how much more conventional and “Oscar-friendly” The Fire Inside is, Nickel Boys is just such a massive and important cinematic achievement that it likely can’t be ignored. The film is also very thought-provoking, with powerful lines like “This is just one place. There’s Nickel’s all over this country”. At one point the question is asked “How can they do that?”, as Elwood says in the film, if we as the audience look away, that is how things like this happen. Nickel Boys is the kind of film that will be talked about for years to come, and it seems like the Oscars will recognize it as the achievement it is.