King Jack, film review: An old tale given fresh flavour in a stylish debut

(15) Felix Thompson, 81 mins. Starring: Charlie Plummer, Cory Nichols, Christian Madsen, Danny Flaherty

Charlie Plummer and Cory Nichols star in ‘King Jack’

There have been other small-town, coming-of-age stories about mixed-up adolescents from the wrong side of the tracks. King Jack isn't breaking new ground in its subject matter but it is an exceptional piece of film-making – one of the very best debut features of its type since David Gordon Green's George Washington.

The writer-director Felix Thompson is helped by a superb performance from Charlie Plummer as the anguished teen hero, Jack. He is both fiery and rebellious and strangely sensitive. The world is giving him a hard time. He is being brought up in near poverty by a single mom who means well but can't cope. The other kids pick on him, especially the sadistic bully Shane (Danny Flaherty). When his tubby cousin Ben (Cory Nichols) comes to stay, the two boys learn the usual seismic lessons about life, love, sex and the cruelty of the adult world.

Occasionally, Thompson's directorial style can be a little too self-consciously poetic. There is a lot of crepuscular lighting. Thompson throws in footage of dusty trains disappearing down the tracks and can even make an image of a tap dripping seem evocative.

Alongside the lyricism, he is fully alert to the brutality of teen life. The kids behave as primitively as the ones caught on a desert island in Lord of the Flies. Jack is a warrior, fighting to survive and always aware that the moment he lets down his guard, he will be betrayed. The film is set in the present day but the story it tells has elements of everything from Huckleberry Finn to SE Hinton's The Outsiders.