Stories of American adolescence have been a reliable source of gritty beauty for the last twenty years. For first time directors, the benefits of working with young stars and reflecting back to your own relatively recent young adulthood seems an irresistible temptation.
Films like George Washington (David Gordon Green), Hide Your Smiling Faces and Kings of Summer (Jordan Vogt-Roberts) have proven excellent career-starters, but more established names have found growing pains a sure bet, from Stand by Me, to The Tree of Life to Boyhood.
King Jack is the latest in this lineage from first time writer-director Felix Thompson, with a rare eye for the specifically modern growing pains. A winner of Tribeca Film Festival’s audience award, it’s an impressive debut that captures working class family life.
Jack (Charlie Plummer) has little to occupy him over the summer, except his rivalry with bully Shane and the burden of his cousin. The family lives of both boys gives us insight into their precarious rebellion, edging on lawlessness. Like Jack himself, this is a tough but tender story that unpicks the superficial coarseness to find an empathetic core to the story of a young tearaway.