![]() ![]() Having got into Yale by sheer talent and hard work (and the fact that he is a championship oarsman), Luke is tapped for membership in the Skulls at the same time that his best friend, a poor black kid called Will (Hill Harper) who aspires to a career in journalism, is working on an exposé of the society’s secrets. His best friends from childhood are now punk car thieves. Luke is a poor orphaned New Haven townie who has had a rough life. ![]() When someone points out to the film’s hero, Luke McNamara (Joshua Jackson), that the CIA was founded within the precincts of the Skull clubhouse, he replies apologetically, “Yes they were, but back in World War II when they were still the good guys.” The bludgeon, wielded by Rob Cohen, the director, and John Pogue, the screenwriter, even lands a typically Hollywoodish glancing blow on the pate of the U.S. ![]() The moral of the story is spelled out for an audience the film-makers obviously expect to be of limited intelligence: “If it’s secret and elite, it can’t be good.” These skulls are not only not above any other their entire reason for existing is to be bashed in by this kind of moral and political heavy-handedness. I wonder if you can guess yet whether the movie is going to be for or against the Skulls? The society apparently has unlimited resources not only to reward these kids even more than birth and family have done, and to further their subsequent careers in surreptitious ways, but also to watch their every move and to punish any deviation from the society’s rigorous and entirely secret rules. So, too, “The Skulls” in the movie go around saying to each other “a skull above any other” (we may not know what this means, but it is clearly élitist), dress in white tie and are mainly the sons of rich parents. The Skulls is a movie about a secret, all-male society at Yale which hardly even attempts to disguise the fact that it is based on Skull and Bones, an élite group whose membership is said to include both the George Bushes. ![]()
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