The Skulls - Alle Macht der Welt

OK the plot is old hat (a secret society that rules the government and covers up a murder or two) but the movie is entertaining. The plot is relatively intelligent and fast-moving; the cast is uniformally good--even Joshua Jackson!; there's no graphic gore (or nudity); and the action scenes are well-done and exciting. Not a great film by any means, but a fun, action-filled, entertaining two hours. Just don't think about it too much afterwards.

While his character was believable, I could NOT take Joshua Jackson seriously in this film at all. He reminds me too much of Joe from Blue's Clues. Overall the movie was OKAY...wasn't too thrilled with it, but hey, at least I got to see Paul Walker! ;).

6/10

Joshua Jackson plays a very smart student who is eager to get into law school. Then he is approached by Paul Walker's character who manages to get him to join a secret society only for the smartest of the smartest students known as The Skulls. It seems that everything is going well but then things start to get much more darker.

On the face of it, it seems like a brilliant idea for a movie. A good breakaway from the typical teen movie. However, it didn't really make good use of the potential it had to be a great movie. The story was made too thin than it should have been and some other details including character development and about this secret society itself were left rather sketchy.

I believe that if these details are elaborated on then this would be a much better and more memorable movie than it actually is.

Mix schlocky but hilarious Hollywood hack dialogue with equally schlocky but hilarious Hollywood hack plotting, and you get a potent 1-2 sucker punch to your intellect...I call it...THE SKULLS. A delightfully silly movie, it moves briskly through semi-serious conflicts and silly conspiracies, and all with the the intelligence of your average CBS movie of the week. But it has a sense of momentum that you can't escape, and soon your on a ride that combines equal parts laughs and smiles, nothing too grim, but a (for what it is) fanatical devotion to its own plot devices. The maguffin of the Skulls society is their rule book, a device that comes to charming use late in the movie. William Peterson's senator reminds Joshua Jackson repeatedly that every conflict, every ordeal, can be solved within the rule book...and indeed within the world of the Skulls, this book does hold all the answers. Dropping hints here and there as to how it'll all end, the movie has a charming level of mystery, no more sinister or thrilling than The Da Vinci Code, but thankfully much less serious in its handling.

One of my favorite scenes is one of the stupidest. The chosen boys are given a grand reception with the many distinguished alumni on a remote island that at times resembles Alcatraz and Hogwarts School for Wizards. The boys are given expensive diving watches (an obvious product placement) and then dressed in tuxedos where they shake hands and shift uncomfortably in their cumberbunds...until the director inexplicably cranks out Creed onto the soundtrack ("Can You Take Me Higher" no less!) and then this huge door opens and out walk whatever waif models were hot in 2000. And they strut out as if on a runway, no sense of acting in any of their faces, and it's pure schlock...and I love it!

Rob Cohen went on to XXX and then tanked with Stealth, but this shows what people in Hollywood saw in the guy. The film is fun, never too heavy, and perfectly suited for a fall evening with your none-too-intellectual school friends OR consumed in 12 minute intervals on TNT. It's plotted swiftly and compellingly enough to justify its running time...another honor not bestowed on The Da Vinci Code. Basically, it's perfectly mindless, harmless fun, with a better than average cast who seem to revel in the camp of it all. Enjoy when you got nothing better to do.

The Skulls is a thinly veiled allusion to one of the purportedly most secret of all secret societies, Skull and Bones, the Yale group to which George Bush (the former president) belonged. You know all about those secret societies; they breed smart, rich young men who will put other smart, rich young men in power, and then those men will put other smart, rich young men in power, and so forth and yadda yadda yadda. You can find out all sorts of things about Skull and Bones online, and I suppose there's a chance some of those things are actually true. But for the purposes of this movie - and this review - suffice to say that The Skulls is a small group mostly made up of rich white kids who get paid scholarships, free cars, free women, the whole works. And what does this secret society ask for in return? Unbound loyalty, of course. Unquestioning and absolute loyalty, kind of like the Mob, really, only the Mob is more overtly criminal.

The story focuses on Luke, a townie at Yale University. Luke wants to go to law school, but the tuition's a little high. He's parentless and low on funds, so of course he's prime pickings for The Skulls. Will he join them? Darn tootin' he will, despite the protests of his best friend and this hot young blonde he likes. They try to reason with him, believing their friendship is stronger than his need to be a lawyer, but they're wrong. If they were right, we'd have no movie.

So he joins, and wouldn't you know it, all kinds of bad things happen to poor Luke. There's murder, there's corruption, and gosh and golly, our boy just doesn't know who to trust. More twists than a Poe novel; the only problem is, they're not believable twists. If you're cynical about this kind of movie (as I am), you'll laugh out loud many times, both at the acting and the dialogue. The worst offense is in the timing, quite frankly. At no point are we led to believe that this society could be a GOOD thing. We know immediately it's bad. See, I think to be truly sinister you need to wear a mask of credibility. If I already know how bad you are, I won't be as afraid of you or as startled when you actually do something despicable.

This is a real chucklefest, in the same vein as Final Destination, Urban Legends, I Know What You Did Last Summer (both movies), and even the Scream movies, which I didn't care for (but I know many of you did, so whatcha gonna do). You have an attractive cast spouting incredible lines in unbelievable situations. The old moviegoer in us wonders what Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck would have done in this movie when they were younger (and, in Stewart's case, alive), but that's probably a philosophical debate best left to denizens of the old critics' home. As for me, I'd say pass on The Skulls - it's as hollow as its name might imply.