Coming of age is a bitch. That’s why it makes such compelling material for rookie and veteran writers alike. Not quite a child, not quite an adult, our protagonist goes through a series of tests and, most of the time, emerges triumphant. Stronger and wiser – on the other side of the child-adult border – they move forward as a new person prepared for much more challenging tests to come.
In “King Jack”, our not quite child, not quite adult, Jack (Charlie Plummer) is getting it from all sides: he’s bullied by his brother at home, bullied by older boys at school and cruelly mocked by a girl he has a serious crush on. With no father in the picture, a mother working tirelessly to provide for her boys and a brother who has problems aplenty, Jack is pretty much on his own. In the midst of frantically running, climbing and jumping his way through the tricky obstacle course that is adolescence, Jack is doing the best that he can. His struggle gets a little more complicated when his mother tasks him with taking care of his younger cousin, Ben (Cory Nichols) who has come to stay for the weekend.
Coming in at a nice and tight 81 minutes, “King Jack” is captivating from first spray paint to last bike ride.
In some ways, it tests us as well. So gripping, so effortlessly visceral, so successful in patching us directly into Jack’s inner world of self-hate and desperate longing, KJ tests our own emotional endurance.
Part of the credit – if not most? – must go to Charlie Plummer. As Jack, Plummer’s performance is note perfect. He looks the part – all soft faced and sad-eyed. He also has that rare actor ability to say everything without saying a thing at all. That face, sporting a black eye and busted lip from the get go, is one of a beaten down boy struggling to survive the very few ups and the very many downs of his tortured teenage years.
Showing remarkable restraint and an impressive ability to subtly show not tell exactly what he’s thinking at any given moment, Plummer makes you his off-screen champion and companion. His successes are your successes. His failures are your failures – actor-audience connection is total.
Leading a solid supporting cast is Danny Flaherty, as Shane – Jack’s tormentor. He’s a wolf in wolf’s clothing with a head full of thunder and a heart full of rain. Shane is no original. He is a copy of a copy of a copy – yet another wounded manchild wandering the battlegrounds of a war that, for all its punches thrown at the other, is mostly a war against the self. Erin Davie, as Jack’s mom, Karen, is good in full-on overloaded single mom mode and Christian Madsen, as Jack’s older brother, Tommy, makes his mark in brief yet telling scenes that show that coming of age is more journey than destination.
The arc of Tommy and Jack’s relationship concludes with a wonderfully moving moment. A lesson in restraint for all concerned, the scene shows you how to make the most of a big moment by playing it in the smallest way possible. The contrast between meaning and method is what gives the scene its power, its poetry and its resonance. No fireworks, no long speeches, no forced tears and, thankfully, no obligatory group hug – the scene just does what it is supposed to do and nothing more. Taking away is just as much of an act of creativity as adding to. Try selling that to the multiplex – they’ll have your head.
Jack’s love life – embarrassing and perfunctory though it may be – is treated with much care and knowing sensitivity. Inside him, a barely contained desire thrashes about – stomping and snorting in vain. Unfortunately, this beast of need is tamed by shyness and deep self-doubt. Yes, though bluntly bold in his texts – in person, Jack is all stumbling, sorry and cringe-inducing. All ambition without awareness, need without knowledge, Jack is still trying to adjust to his new self.
At the same time, this primal push for the pleasures of the flesh does have its tender side. Call it a need for a touch beyond, a longing to leave the self, to feel, on the tips of one’s fingers, a skinscape at once familiar and foreign – at once taking you away and bringing you back to yourself.
Yet, Jack’s search for his first sexual lift – not self-applied – is complicated by his concurrent pursuit of an equally desired lift in his lowly social status. And, for him, those two urges meet in Robyn (Scarlet Lizabeth), more woman than girl, who has a flock of admirers and plenty of social cred. Though she is cruel and clearly out of his league, Jack, nonetheless, persists. Too far down this path to turn back, Jack is on a collision course with every deed dodged and debt unpaid.
Coming of age is coming apart. Then, putting yourself back together again – though not as before. The self as a snowball gaining speed and size as it rolls its way down the hill of your years – each new layer accumulated both adding to and subtracting from those layers that came before. The more you take on, the more you grow. The more you grow, the more you take on, the less you recall the time when you could hardly take on any at all.
Surprise of surprises, this was writer-director Felix Thompson’s first feature film and he hits the bulls-eye with it. Admirably lean, mercilessly to-the-point and packed with wonderfully expressive images that both shock and soothe, Thompson has crafted a full-blooded tale of teenage torment. Along the way, he shows you that great filmmaking is not dependent on huge budgets and a big name cast. Instead, Thompson lights it up and leaves you in awe as he shows you just what can be done with a camera, some actors and a small sack of change.
It’s a story about the ugly consequences that come from failed relationships between older men and younger men. Tommy is to Shane what Shane is to Jack and Shane is to Jack what Jack is to Ben. They pass on punishment instead of mentorship. Older man hands down the hurt to a younger man, and, by doing so, misses an opportunity to heal. Make no mistake – they are talking to each other. They are just using punches and kicks instead of nouns and verbs. The proof that each has heard the other is in the pain and physical scars that stretch across the length of their beaten bodies.
Though not explicitly shown or stated, there is a suggestion that all of this hurt started with Tommy and Jack’s father. He gave it to Tommy who passed it onto Shane who passed it onto Jack. In Jack’s longest bit of uninterrupted dialogue, he digs up the past, opens its coffin and asks for your prayers. Well played by Plummer, it serves as both a brief bit of well executed exposition and as a set up for a moment of tenderness and triumph that, when it does arrives later on, leaves a smile on your face.
“King Jack” is a bruised and battered hymn to broken manhood. Emotionally devastating and artfully accomplished, it is a remarkable directorial debut that does not waste a second.
