The Skulls

Plot synopsis:
Luke McNamara (Joshua Jackson) is a student with aspirations to become a lawyer. A "townie" who grew up on the "wrong side of the tracks", he did well enough in school to attend college on a scholarship where he is a champion rower. His best friends at college are his love interest Chloe (Leslie Bibb), and Will (Hill Harper) who is the coxswain of the Bulldog 8's rowing team of which Luke is the captain (at the victory party for the 8's, Chloe is revealed to come from a wealthy family which is why Luke is reluctant to reveal his feelings for her). Luke's friendships hit the rocks when he is invited to join a secret society known as "The Skulls". After Luke passes the first part of the initiation process - theft from a rival frat together with boxing prodigy Caleb Mandrake (Paul Walker) as his co-conspirator and alleged "soulmate", and being lectured in the secret ritual room by a senior Skull that is standing in front of a wall with the word "WAR" engraved into it in huge capital letters. A senior Skull explains to Luke that the Skulls require their members to prove themselves in war. Luke has a falling out with Will when the latter realizes that Luke has become a Skull.
Luke quickly strikes up a friendship with his alleged soulmate. Caleb's father, Litten Mandrake (Craig T. Nelson), is the current Chairman of the Skulls and a Federal Court Judge who is pushing for a position in the Supreme Court, and his partner Senator Ames Levritt (William Petersen), takes an interest in Luke. Eventually Will, who has been conducting research on the Skulls for some time, discovers their secret ritual room. Will gets caught in the room by Caleb and in the ensuing struggle he falls and is knocked unconscious. Caleb is ordered to leave the room by his father, who then orders Skulls member and the University's provost Martin Lombard (Christopher McDonald) to break Will's neck. The Skulls manage to move the body and make it look like Will committed suicide in his dorm room by hanging himself.
Luke is greatly troubled by the death of his best friend, especially because Will's family is the only family he had (due to the death of his parents at a young age), and becomes suspicious that Will was in fact murdered. He initially thinks that Caleb is guilty of the murder, and Caleb thinks that he himself is guilty since he assumed that Will was dead when he left the room. With the help of some of his 'townie' childhood friends who have turned petty crime into an art form (Luke also bribes them to help him by giving them the car he had been given by the Skulls, a 1963 Ford Thunderbird convertible as an apology for missing his friends birthday the week before), Luke obtains the Skulls security tapes that prove Lombard committed the murder and in trying to convince Caleb of the truth (that it was his father who was responsible for Will's death), Luke realizes how scared Caleb is of his father. Before Luke can show the evidence to police, the Skulls council, who know Luke has stolen the tapes, vote that he is no longer loyal (Litten Mandrake blackmailed Levritt with pictures of him and his much younger mistress to allow the vote to carry). When he does go to the police, the tape is switched by Detective Sparrow (Steve Harris) and Luke is confined to a mental hospital under the control of the Skulls.
With the help of Levritt and Chloe, Luke manages to escape the hospital and he and Chloe survive an attempt on his life by Lombard who is shot and killed by Detective Sparrow (who it turns out is working for Levritt). Luke decides that his only option is to fight the Skulls by their own rules, and "bring war to them". He challenges Caleb to a duel at the Skulls' private island, by invoking rule 119. Litten tries to take his son's place in the duel but is denied the opportunity due to another Skull rule (119b, line 15). After Luke and Caleb take their ten paces and turn around, Luke drops his gun and tries to convince Caleb of the truth and that he is not responsible for Will's murder. Despite being pressured by Litten to kill Luke, Caleb cannot bring himself to pull the trigger. At this point, Litten loses control, grabs a pistol, and attempts to shoot Luke himself, but before he can fire, Caleb shoots his own father. The wound is not a fatal one, but Caleb, mortified at what he has done, tries to kill himself but is stopped by Luke.
The film ends with Luke's realization that Senator Levritt waited to help him until he had no other choice but to duel and eliminate his rival (Caleb's father). Luke becomes disgusted with the order and refuses to participate further, despite threats from Levritt that he will be tracked down someday, and despite, or even because of, Levritt's offer that the Skulls will accept him because he has proven himself in war. As Luke walks away Levritt says to himself, "Well done son, well done". It has been speculated, because of this along with other incidents in the film (such as him comparing their backgrounds, Luke's unknown father situation, and Levritt taking an immediate liking to Luke), that Levritt may be Luke's father. The final shot of the film shows Luke reuniting with Chloe.

Tags: murder, flashback

Review:
He is hoping to be called for membership into the Skulls, a secret society of great status and power.
Nelson gives a wonderfully nefarious performance as the chairman of the Skulls and Caleb's father.Maybe secret societies exist, and maybe they don't.
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.
But he soon realizes that being in this society comes at a price.The plot begins with some intrigue but falls short after awhile and that's when you realize that this film is just there to entertain and yo shold just sit back and enjoy the ride.
he needs acting lessons.so guys don't go into this movie looking for a great script or anything like that.
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.
The maguffin of the Skulls society is their rule book, a device that comes to charming use late in the movie.
'Secret Society' Film Is So-So. This is one of those pretty entertaining-yet-not memorable stories.
Joshua Jackson and Paul Walker were both very sharp in this movie, but some of the acting was a little poor.
So Luke, with a little help from his friend Chloe (Leslie Bibb.) try to find out what really happened to Will and along the way they find out some other disturbing things about The Skulls.
An elected and privileged few on campus students, who are part of this secret society, known as the skulls, their logo, literally branded on the hand, can have anything their heart desires, hot flashy woman, elite women, and big balances in their ATM, only it comes with a price.
Luke McNamara (Joshua "Dawson's Creek" Jackson, stepping up into film with the lead role) is one of those few, where soon his close room mates and friends, who are becoming distanced from him, caution him earlier, on the dangers of this infamous group, especially his male buddy, who's pretty suss, and ultimately pays with his own life, later, while doing some snooping around.
The performances are genuinely are good in this, notably Craig T Nelson, one of the founders of the society, and William L Petersen, a southern mayor and willing member, where soon as the movie enters more dramatic states, where questions need to be answered.
Paul Walker isn't too bad either as Craig T Nelson's troubled and schooled son, bossed around by his father, where he befriends Jackson, in a so so, but spirited performance, where a very dramatic standoff ending ensues, it's all so seriously thrilling, and that's what The Skulls is.
Despite the general bad comments from all contributors of this film in IMDb, Rob Cohen's "The Skulls", shows some interesting aspects about a secret society in one Ivy League university.First of all, it's almost inconceivably how a "townie" like Lucas McNamara, can enter this society, which is clearly intended for the rich boys that attend the university.
In this case it is the judge that aspires to be the next supreme court nominee, something that has some actual interest, since the president of the United States, a secret society member himself, has had to choose people to fill key vacancies in the government.The best assets of the film lie in the crisp cinematography by Shane Hurlbut, who does wonder with his camera.
Well this film is one of the best of the year 2000.Why?Because it has a good plot , I enjoyed the action scenes and is a very intelligent story.
Joshua Jackson plays a boy who enter in a secret sociaty "The Skulls" where he has marvelous cars , beautiful women and many other pleasures.
Just watch the movie like a good distraction , don't judge everything ,be nice with this one.
There are no so many films made about secret societies.So from that yardstick the filming of "The Skulls" could have been hailed as a watershed event.However this was not to be as this film suffers from too many narrative inaccuracies.It appears that this film's team has not done its homework properly.The director and screen writer did not bother to concentrate on the single most important theme of the film : Secret Socities.No one can doubt that ample academic research was done before even the commencement of the actual filming.Instead of an overall development of this theme unsuspecting viewers were bombarded with an erratic array of out of topic themes like murder,blossoming of love,realization of personal guilt etc.The film appears as a distressed soul due to poor acting.Should any one wants to know what led a young boy to join a secret society ?
Luke McNamara (Joshua Jackson) is a working class college student struggling to come up with the tuition to pay for Harvard Law. He's an elite rower and hopes to be pick by The Skulls who supposedly pay for tuition.
This movie was made over 10 years ago, if you think of all the others movies coming out at the end of the 90's this was really pretty good.Watch it!
It has a similar feel to "Enemy of the State" but fails to strike you at home, for the struggle comes to the privileged membership of an elite college, and not to the ordinary man (although they do their best to make Joshua Jackson seem as normal as possible) The acting is fair, bordering on good.
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.
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..
The Skulls was definitely an interesting concept, and contained some truly intriguing moments however good writing alone could not save this film.
The bad acting (especially by Jackson and Harper) overshadows what could have been otherwise great moments in the film.
The idea alone of The Skulls as a secret society was most likely what spawned the sequels, not this film..
I had no reason to go see this movie, I had never once seen an episode of Dawson's Creek, where star of The Skulls, Joshua Jackson, became a star, so my interest was not peaked by him being in it.
Some college guy wants to become a member of a secret society on it's Connecticut campus (but it's NOT Yale, repeat NOT Yale, Yale must had seen an advance on this movie and wisely stayed away), then after joining the boy's club, want's out for reasons that would give away what little interesting plot points there are.
The idea of secret societies should have made a good movie, but it didn't.
This movie should be included as a required course in film schools as how not to make movies -- in a year full of really bad movies, this one is skull and shoulders above everything else in bad acting, directing, and above all--laughably poor writing.
For a poor guy, he's pretty well off.Enough of that; what you want to hear about are the titular Skulls, a "Secret" Society on campus that gives its members everything they ever wanted...
Here are my tips to people looking to start their own societies, taking what I learned from watching "The Skulls"-Branding your members makes them pretty easy to identify.-Mood lighting, and well-timed light cues really adds drama to those initiation ceremonies.-If you don't want people to know where you live, don't put a gigantic Skull on top of your mansion.-Before you drug people, let them know that they are going to wake up inside a sealed coffin, so they immediately know where they are when they wake up, and how to get out (Given the relative ease with which the Skull recruits jump out of SEALED coffins I can only assume they were warned in advance).Not very secretive.
("Coach") Nelson as a villain who's about as intimidating as Dick Dastardly from "Wacky Races," a very poorly edited chase scene, and two times in which the director really wants you to think the characters are going to get shot...and boy does he sure pull the wool over your eyes!
After reading most of these reviews, I think a lot of people are overanalyzing so they never really got to sit back and enjoy the movie for what it was.Joshua Jackson did a good job as Luke McNamara.
From the start, you are asked to leave your brain at the door, so do that and count the silly scenes, the bad acting (Paul Walker has taken over the preppy/jerk parts from Hart Bochner; Joshua Jackson has no ability as a leading man) and the entire overblown production..
THE SKULLS / (2000) *Starring: Paul Walker, Joshua Jackson, Craig T.
The film is entirely fictional, although it claims to use concepts behind a real secret campus society called Skull and Bones.
Another key character in this film is Luke's other friend, Caleb Mandrake (Paul Walker), who is popular among young girls and is muscularly attractive in appearance.
this movie really has it all,, action, violence, pretty girls,, intrigue , mystery, real life aspects,, stars Paul Walker, and a great cast of others too many to mention here,, paul plays caleb a son to Craig T.
so our hero Joshua Jackson gets accepted into the Skulls where he had to pass a number of tests before he could get accepted, once inside the Secret Society that's where the real fun starts.
a reporter friend of his is killed and Joshua starts to wonder if Caleb had something to do with his death,, well without giving away any endings or anything like that the intrigue does build as people within the skulls start to take sides against one another , pitting good against evil, this is a great moviein my opinion that should not be missed..
Basically it's about a three best friends (Joshua Jackson as Luke, Leslie Bibb as Chloe and Hill Harper as Will) who attend college together.
Everything is fine and dandy until Luke gets invited to join a secret society on campus known as The Skulls.
He makes new friends (most prominently Paul Walker as Caleb) and doesn't want anything to do with his old ones and if that wasn't bad enough, the secret society turns out to be pretty sinister.The plot starts off promising, with Joshua Jackson and Paul Walker's characters bonding (due to their new connection in the Skulls) coming in and disturbing the friendship that is set up between the likable characters in the introduction.
From then on the film doesn't really take any chances and goes for the easy route, with standard evil secret society stuff, a predictable murder mystery and a shoehorned love story.
For younger, less discriminating audiences this might be entertaining but if you've ever seen any movie with a secret society or cult, you've seen this film before and probably better.
Nelson) and angry young idealist (the underrated Hill Harper, who most recently showed up in the ill-fated TV series City of Angels) bent on exposing the inner workings of all things secret; "if it's secret and elite, it can't be good." When you spell out your theme that plainly that early in the movie, what do you have left?Still, this flick had a whole lot of wasted potential.
The main story focuses on the relationship between local-boy-made-good Luke MacNamara (teen heartthrob Joshua Jackson from Dawson's Creek) and the Evil Slimy Overlord's son, Caleb Mandrake (teen heartthrob Paul Walker, recently of Varsity Blues), with minor attention paid to how Luke's induction into the secret society affects his friendships with Harper's character and his "the audience knows they're in love but he doesn't" girlfriend Chloe (teen heartthrob Leslie Bibb, from the TV series Popular).
Granted, 'The Skulls' is nowhere in the league of such films as 'American Beauty' or 'Fight Club', but it is a fun little thriller that will pass an hour or so.
You watch a film for entertainment or take your mind off other things and that is exactly what The Skulls does!
The plot is good and different and I do admit that the secret society not being so secret was a little hard to believe but that is not the end of the world!
I did have a problem with once scene in the movie, the scene where Luke is running and he ends up in an alley, and these bad guys in a costly car are following him, how did Luke's friends know that he was going to be chased?
Painfully bad--cheesy dialogue, predictable storyline, mediocre acting...think Breaking Away meets the Hardy Boys, mimicking the Judd Nelson made for TV "billionaire boys club." Of course we see in film the working class white boy and the token African-American "buddy." Of course it wasn't LUKE convincing WILLIAM not to join the elite privileged self-congratulating homo erotic prep club.
Secret societies like the Skulls, no.
I know it's fiction but, perhaps the secret society could have been cloaked in say...more secrecy.The movie isn't a waste though.
If you like films that are just there to entertain then watch this one, it is pretty good for entertainment...it sure as hell is no Gladiator, or American Beauty...but it's worth the rental price..
Not to say that the movie was all bad, but, unless you are extremely intrigued by secret societies or Joshua Jackson, you'll walk out of the theatre asking yourself why you just spent money on the film..
Ridiculous from start to (wishing it were sooner) film end.Secret society?
But the real test of a good script is that during the movie the viewer stays attached to the story, and no single film-making aspect -- good or bad -- pulls you out of it for long.
The Skulls is a secret society at "certain Ivy League colleges," with members (alumni) worldwide.
Let's face it, like my sister said, "They don't cast Joshua Jackson and Paul Walker in a movie if they expect you to pay any attention to the storyline".
I think Joshua Jackson is quite a good actor, but there wasn't much in this movie that required serious acting.
Luke MacNamara, the typical outcast in a rich pretty boy school ends up joining a secret society.
But I was pleasantly surprised as to how good it was, a completely different ending as to what I thought would have happened, I quite enjoyed it.So all of you reading the comment by Jared just dismiss it and go and see a thoroughly entertaining movie..
I thought Joshua Jackson actually did quite a good job with the acting!
I thought that this movie was going to go a little deeper into secret societies but just skimmed the surface with a one dimensional characters and a laughable plot.
Unfortunately, they made it look like joining a secret society is a bad thing to do and the audience is relieved when the main character leaves it behind in the end.
With this kind of film you have to ignore the plot holes, and inconsistency of the plot and enjoy it for what is:good fun.The Skulls is about a secret elite on a college campus that almost everyone wants to be apart of.
I haven't seen such bad camera movement since the blair witch Project.so guys we all know the skulls isn't an oscar winning film, but it is good fun entertainment at its finest..
Don't get me wrong it was intriguing for a few scenes, but after awhile I felt like I was watching The Firm all over again.The acting of Josh Jackson and Leslie Bibb were extremely entertaining and I was particularly impressed by Paul Walker's acting abilities.
The supporting cast was exceptional and by all standards this combination had the making of a witty, intriguing and gripping movie, but it does not come out that way.Josh Jackson plays Luke McNamara who is looking for a way to pay for his impending law school career, so against his better judgement and warning from his friends, he joins a highly secret society that has had some influential members in it ranks before.
You can see everybody else's comments about how the movie was (I think it was OK and worth catching on cable), but I couldn't understand why they were saying the Skulls society is secret.
What kind of secret society is it if everyone knows about it and wants to get in?This movie had potential.
The Skulls is a silly film that must have been written by a teenager with no real world experience in college, fraternities, or "secret" societies.
i liked the acting of Joshua jackson, Paul walker and the girl (the heroin) she was by far the best of all..
Like the society portrayed in the movie, this film is more interesting if left unseen..
I had a great time at The Skulls, no thanks to the movie.
The Skulls is full of great eye candy: of course there's the delectable Joshua Jackson and the decent-looking Paul Walker, but this movie is also full of great scenes.
However, "The Skulls" follows a different method than most thrillers of building and easing tension  relying less on cloak-and-dagger scenes and more on situational problems that characters have to solve.Joshua Jackson plays an ivy league college student who gains entry to a secret society that includes senators and judges.
Although it resolves the conflicts in the movie, it strongly tests the viewer's ability to put up with the believability of the secret society.From an acting standpoint, "The Skulls" delivers neither remarkable nor damaging performances.