Editor’s note: This review was originally published during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Blue Harbor Entertainment opens “Ricky” in theaters on Friday, April 24, 2026.

A valuable complement to the recent “Sing Sing” and its spiritually affirming story about how programs like Rehabilitation Through the Arts have lowered recidivism rates by treating prisoners like human beings, Rashad Frett’s “Ricky” is a hard-knocks drama about one of the countless American men who were never given that same chance. A complicated story without a particularly endearing hero to root for, the film reflects the punitive nature of the post-prison system in a country where former inmates are denied any support in their pursuit of a better future after they’re released from jail.

For 30-year-old Ricky Smith (Stephan James), life as a free man in Hartford, Connecticut is even harder than he feared. Fresh out of prison after serving 15 years behind bars — a full half of his time on Earth — for robbery and attempted murder, Ricky finds that his past lingers over every obstacle he faces on the outside. He’s more than a decade late to his first crack at unsupervised adulthood, and any kind of stability is proving almost impossible to sustain.

There’s a reason why Ricky often mutters to himself that it might be “better inside than out.” In prison, the only home he’s ever known as an adult, every day was relatively the same. The outside world is considerably more chaotic, and the learning curve is mighty steep: Ricky has to find a job, keep that job, learn to drive, get a car, get a driver’s license, consistently go to group meetings with former felons, and show up to meetings with his parole officer (a fierce Sheryl Lee Ralph), all while staying away from drugs and avoiding contact with the people he met in prison. Fail to meet any of these conditions, and Ricky might be locked up again.

Returning to his childhood home and living with his mother (Simbi Kali), Ricky endeavors to re-establish himself in the Caribbean American community he left as a teenager. The threat of recidivism hangs over his head like a dark cloud, exerting itself on Ricky’s mind and body alike — the anxiety often expressed itself in uncontrollable shaking. He’s like a teenager who remains confined to a grown man’s body, unable to control the external factors that brought him to this moment in his life as he tries to repair his relationship with his mother while attempting a romantic connection with a young single mother (Imani Lewis) who lets Ricky cut her son’s hair — a skill he picked up while in prison.

Ricky must learn how to set his own schedule, something the constantly late and often apologetic man can’t seem to get a handle on. He begs for jobs from old acquaintances, but sustaining them is a challenge. Despite becoming a whiz at cutting hair, he can’t seem to establish himself as a barber. Despite his parole officer’s numerous warnings and multiple chances, life has a way of catching up with a felon who hasn’t been given even the smallest of head-starts.

This all-too-familiar premise might lend itself to melodrama, but “Ricky” emerges as a marvelously understated examination of one man’s struggle to achieve stability. Frett and Lin Que Ayoung’s nuanced script mines rich specifics from the tropes of its story, as the film delves into Hartford’s Caribbean American community with the same attention to detail that it explores post-prison life and the threat of recidivism. Quaking with the same intensity of the man that it follows, Sam Motamedi’s handheld camera viscerally physicalizes Ricky’s frustration without ever betraying the unvarnished reality of his circumstances.

Those circumstances soon give rise to an identity crisis that reflects Ricky’s stunted adolescence. It’s all in the name, which sounds more and more like a holdover from childhood every time his parole officer refers to him as Ricardo, or a potential employer defaults to calling him Rick. The man behind the name may no longer be in prison, but “Ricky” is a jail of its own. And while it was unambiguously a jail of its own making, Frett’s film is less concerned with his pursuit of redemption than it is with a system that’s designed to prevent any hope of forward movement. 

And yet, James endows Ricky with such a deep bedrock of humanity that anything seems possible, even as the character’s mistakes become increasingly exasperating as they start to compound (viewers might feel compelled to reach through the screen and set an alarm clock for Ricky in a desperate bid to help keep him on schedule). Stoicism personified before the cracks begin to show, James layers Ricky full of fear and fervor, his performance never more nuanced or alive than it is in the moments where the actor is forced to navigate both of those feelings at once, such as he is in the scene where he has sex post-prison for the first time. Frett holds a close-up of James’ face, the actor revealing his character’s teenage vulnerability with an all-encompassing realness.

“Ricky” is a personal story for Frett, a Hartford native whose knowing and lived-in debut has been deeply informed by the experiences of people he knows from home. It’s a powerful introduction to Frett’s ability behind the camera, and a necessary post-script to films like “Sing Sing” for its honest pursuit of hope and humanity in a system that’s designed to extinguish them both.

Grade: A-

“Ricky” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

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