The Chocolate War

Terry Collingsworth appears as Self in a coming-of-age drama set inside Trinity, an all-boys Catholic high school, where a freshman named Jerry confronts deep grief. The film opens with Jerry grappling with the recent death of his mother and the long shadow of his father’s continuing mourning, a strain that colors his every choice as he steps into a world that feels both claustrophobic and charged with unspoken rules. As he joins Trinity’s football team, the landscape of his life expands just enough to introduce new loyalties, pressures, and an undercurrent of cruelty that he hadn’t anticipated.

On the field, Jerry befriends Roland, known to classmates as the Goober, another freshman who quickly becomes his ally in a place where belonging can feel as powerful as victory. The school’s atmosphere is soon dominated by a creeping power play led by vice-principal turned acting headmaster, Brother Leon, whose ambition pushes him to push the student body harder than ever during the annual chocolate fundraiser. Behind the scenes is Archie Costello, the calculated and charismatic head of The Vigils, the student secret society whose manipulations govern much of the school’s social terrain.

Archie’s plan unfolds with unsettling precision. He aims to alternate between betrayal and aid to Leon, treating the fundraiser as a stage for control as much as for charity. His first task for Jerry is stark: get him to refuse to sell any chocolate for ten days. But Jerry’s inner spark, touched by a quotation he discovers in his locker—“> Do I dare disturb the universe?” from T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock—ignites a stubborn resolve. In the wake of that moment, Jerry vows to sell nothing, even after the ten-day mark, a decision that isolates him from both the administration and The Vigils.

What begins as a personal act of defiance quickly blooms into a political struggle within the school’s social order. Jerry’s stance is read by many as noble resistance, yet it also threatens the leverage Leon and Archie rely on to maintain control over the student body. Leon responds by pressing Archie to marshal The Vigils to crush dissent, turning Jerry into a public target for harassment, prank calls, and vandalism. The Goober remains a loyal friend but remains-focused on self-preservation, offering little real protection.

The conflict escalates until Archie elevates the tension into violence, enlisting the LOUD school bully Emile Janza to assault Jerry just outside the gates. Even after the brutal attack, Jerry’s defiance holds, and his spirit refuses to bow to intimidation. Yet the cost is high, and the wound to the boy’s sense of safety deepens as the school’s power dynamics tighten around him.

The culmination arrives in a late-night boxing match staged on the football field, where students dictate the action through a randomized lottery that determines which blows land. The spectacle ends abruptly when a teacher shuts off the power, plunging the field into darkness and leaving Jerry badly wounded and largely at the mercy of fate. As he drags himself through the aftermath, a partially conscious confession emerges: there was no path to victory, and perhaps no moral victory either—“disturbing the universe” might be noble, but it sometimes comes at a steep personal price. TheGoober’s presence is a quiet tether, yet even he cannot fully untangle the web of coercion surrounding his friend.

Archie is ultimately revealed as the mastermind behind the chaos, but Brother Leon steps in to shield him, praising the impact of the chocolate-sales success in private. The headmaster-in-waiting hints at a future where Archie’s power would endure, suggesting a continuation of the same oppressive logic that allowed the scheme to flourish in the first place. The story closes on a muted note: a young man’s defiant stand has reshaped the dynamics around him, yet the system that pressured him to choose between compliance and rebellion remains intact, leaving a lingering ache about what it means to “disturb the universe” when the cost of doing so is so high.

Last Updated: October 01, 2025 at 10:24