Reviewed by Ben Lee

This review contains some/major spoilers.

Oh great, please not another one. Another potentially tense drama has yet again gone down the drain. It joins Retaliation, The World Around Igby, Veteran, and more in the fairly big list of 'disappointing dramas'. So where does this all start to go wrong? Well, the script. Seriously, right from the start, hardly anything makes sense! The grudge seemed to appear out of nowhere, the harsh beatings went way too far, and a couple of reactions were so unrealistic, I could swear that they were being drugged or something! It is set in the real world, not some fantasy land, and Jake, put simply, is a completely exaggerated movie.

One thing that usually does help dramas is sympathy. Any good drama usually has some bit where you feel sorry, soften up, and sympathise with the characters. Unfortunately, throughout the whole movie, I just sat staring quite blank. I tried, I really did, to pity the outsider and the black sheep of the gang, but I couldn't sense any reason why I should. Things just happened out of the blue, with no reason, and the script is Jake's major flaw. There WERE some bits I kind of liked though. The connection between Chuck, effectively the odd one out of the evil group, and the girl, who seemed to care for the victim a lot, was directed fairly well, but it was let down by a few words they exchanged when the girl found out Chuck knew what happened to John. The script just killed off any tension of the possible friction this friendship could have.

And the disappointments kept on building up, especially as we get given more insight on the bully; it was too inconsistent. He turned from 'RAR! I'm scary! I'm big!' to 'Umm, yeah, sorry, won't do it again, promise!' Well, at least I can credit Dave Smith for trying to develop the characters, he just needs to work on doing it better. And after all that, I was hoping that the ending was going to surprise me. And it did...in the wrong way. It was hilariously bad. BAD. On my second viewing, the ending reminded me too much of The World Around Igby, but worse. Guy shoots big guy. OK, sounds plausible. But the way it was done was horrendous! BANG, it's over. No tension. No dramatic climax. Nothing. The result? No sympathy. No feelings. Nothing. I couldn't care less about Chuck or the dead body. This was a real shame considering I actually gave some thought into WHY Chuck did it. The reasoning behind it was perhaps too over-the-top and unrealistic, but it worked in a way, and the ending could have worked so much better with some improved direction.

The annoying thing is that Jake had so much potential. Ounces of it. But I could not get any realistic personality of Mark, John, Chuck, and any of the bullies. Their characters gave one or two hints that they were thought out, and I did like a couple of aspects, but overall, this was nothing special. This was too extreme and over-the-top. You don't see a bully picking on some small random kid one day and go from paper-throwing to murder in a couple of days, do you? Especially if he didn't do anything to provoke him! And to make all this worse, the sounds and music dismissed any chance of suspense being caused. Oh, but it was ruined already by the poor directing. On the bright side, the little twist about John did surprise me. Plesantly. So much potential wasted...

Score: 53/100