Review #1,478: 'Assassin's Creed' (2016)

Despite numerous critical and commercial failures over the last quarter of a century, Hollywood just cannot turn away from trying to capitalise on an industry that continues to out to out-gross them. Video game adaptations have been a thing ever since Nintendo tried and catastrophically failed to bring to life the colourful world of Mario and Luigi with 1993's Super Mario Bros., and it's become a running joke ever since that there has never been, and will unlikely ever be, a decent console-to-big-screen adaptation. But the $1 billion-plus success of Capcom's Resident Evil franchise lingers in the minds of many a studio head, so pretty much every year a new cast and crew are put together to develop a game series with a promise to break the trend. 

While the likes of Prince of Persia and Rampage are perfectly serviceable fluff, they are way overshadowed by the unbearable awfulness of a Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, or a Max Payne, or whatever hot turd Uwe Boll is serving up that month. We have gone through the disappointment too many times to believe it when a director promises to stick to the source material, but eyebrows were raised when it came to the inevitable movie adaptation of Ubisoft's hugely successful Assassin's Creed series, which plunged you into a centuries-old battle between the Knights Templar and a shadowy group known as the Assassins. Not only was Justin Kurzel, director of the truly unsettling Australian drama Snowtown and Shakespeare epic Macbeth, to helm the film, but Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, two of the most respected actors in the business, were also signed up for the leads. Could this be the movie to finally bridge the two mediums and match the success of its source material?

The short answer is no, but by no means is Assassin's Creed a complete disaster. Its main problem is that it depicts two worlds from two different periods in time, but forgets to make them both interesting. We have the Inquisition-era Madrid, where hooded assassins move stealthily through the crowd armed with daggers and their wits, as they attempt to bring down those in power who seek peace in the land through control. The Assassins also long for peace, but peace gained through freedom, and they don't want a McGuffin known as the Apple of Eden, which somehow possesses the power to block humanity's free will, falling into their hands. This war has raged on for centuries, and in the modern era - a glum grey world full of murky corridors and empty rooms - the Templar continue their search for the Apple, employing a new technology that allows people to travel into the memories of their ancestors, to track down the allusive object through the centuries. 

We spend the bulk of the time in the present day, as convicted criminal Cal Lynch (Fassbender) is saved from the electric chair by Sofia (Cotillard) and spends much of his time brooding in his cell over the murder of his mother. I get the feeling that writers Michael Lesslie, Adam Cooper and Bill Collage want to keep you in the dark about who the good guys are here, but as soon as Jeremy Irons arrives with his black turtleneck sweater, you pretty much know how this is going to play out. The plot is an odd mixture of overly complicated and incredibly stupid, and much of the screentime is spent having these characters explain it to each other and the audience, or at least those in the crowd who have never played the game (like myself). When Cal finally straps up and enter the body of his ancestor Aguilar de Nerha, the movie springs into life, although this bleached-out world of questionable special effects and wannabe-Indiana Jones action may have seemed all the more exiting by the sheer dreariness of the alternative. 

Directed by: Justin Kurzel

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling, Michael Kenneth Williams

Country: USA/France/UK/Hong Kong/Taiwan/Malta

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie