''King Jack'' is a 2015 American

coming-of-age Coming of age is a young person's transition from being a child to being an adult. The specific age at which this transition takes place varies between societies, as does the nature of the change. It can be a simple legal convention or can ...

adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme ...

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...

film written and directed by Felix Thompson in his

directorial debut This is a list of film directorial debuts in chronological order. The films and dates referred to are a director's first commercial cinematic release. Many film makers have directed works which were not commercially released, for example early work ...

. The film stars

Charlie Plummer Charlie Faulkner Plummer is an American actor. Plummer began his career as a child actor in short films before appearing on the television dramas ''Boardwalk Empire'' and ''Granite Flats.'' In 2019, he starred in the Hulu miniseries '' Looking fo ...

, Cory Nichols,

Christian Madsen Christian Lucas Madsen is an American actor. He is best known for his roles in the films ''Divergent (film), Divergent'' (2014) and ''Palo Alto (2013 film), Palo Alto'' (2013). Life and career Christian Madsen was born in Los Angeles to actors Mi ...

Daniel Flaherty Daniel Flaherty (born June 11, 1993) is an American actor, known for his role as Stanley Lucerne on the MTV teen drama series '' Skins''. Life and career Flaherty started studying acting at age 11. When he turned 13, he booked his first short f ...

Erin Davie Erin Davie is an American actress and singer, best known for her performance as the young Edith Bouvier Beale in the Broadway production of the musical ''Grey Gardens'', taking the part on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre in 2006, after its in ...

and

Chloe Levine Chloe (; ), also spelled Chloë, Chlöe, or Chloé, is a feminine name meaning "blooming" or "fertility" in Greek. The name ultimately derives, through Greek, from the Proto-Indo-European root ', which relates to the colors yellow and green. T ...

, and follows a 15-year-old boy who befriends his introverted cousin while facing off against a sadistic school bully.

Plot

Jack, a scrappy 15-year-old boy, bonds with his introverted cousin while facing off against a bully.

Cast

as Jack * Cory Nichols as Ben *

as Tom *

as Shane *

as Karen *

as Holly * Yainis Ynoa as Harriet * Melvin Mogoli as Beavan * Keith Leonard as Officer Pete * Francis Piscopo as Eric

Release

The film premiered at the

Tribeca Film Festival The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by Tribeca Productions. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive programming. Tribeca was f ...

on April 17, 2015.

Reception

On the

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, which categorizes reviews only as positive or negative, 94% of 35 reviews are positive. The website's critical consensus reads, "Hard-hitting and honest yet sensitive, ''King Jack'' is an uncommonly affecting coming-of-age drama and a powerful calling card for debuting writer-director Felix Thompson." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which uses a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

, assigned the film a score of 72 out of 100 based on 17 critics, indicating "Generally Favorable Reviews". In the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

'', Michael Rechtsaffen said that "thanks to a strongly rooted lead performance by Charlie Plummer as a 15-year-old small-town kid who's well on his way to a stint in juvenile detention, "King Jack" still strikes a resonant chord." On ''

IndieWire IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Holl ...

'', David Ehrlich said that "writer-director Felix Thompson's first film is a sensitive and self-possessed debut that clocks in at 76 minutes and doesn't waste a single one of them"

References

External links

Official website (archive)
* 2015 films 2010s adventure drama films American adventure drama films American coming-of-age drama films 2010s coming-of-age drama films American independent films Films about bullying Films about children Films set in New York (state) Films set in 2010 Films shot in New York (state) Whitewater Films films 2015 independent films 2015 directorial debut films 2015 drama films 2010s English-language films 2010s American films {{adventure-film-stub