Assassin’s Creed

The latest attempt to convert a successful gaming franchise into a film series boasts an impressive cast of award-winning actors, and the end result is enjoyable enough as a popcorn action flick, but it’s not fun enough to be a “guilty pleasure”, and not smart enough to leave a lasting impression.

Premise:  Death-row inmate Callum Lynch (Michael Fassbender) awakens in a secret facility run by the Abstergo Foundation after his apparent execution.  There he learns of a secret war that has raged for centuries between the Templars and the Assassins, as Abstergo’s chief scientist, Sophia Rikkin (Marion Cotillard), and CEO, Alan Rikkin (Jeremy Irons), explain that the key to eliminating violence from society may be found by forcing Callum to relive the “genetic memories” of his ancestor, the 15th Century assassin, Aguilar de Nerha.

Verdict:

First off, there’s a lot to like about this film.  No one can say that it didn’t try to break the so-called curse of the game-to-film adaptation – it has an impressive cast (those mentioned above, plus Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling and Michael K. Williams) and an award winning director, and it’s certainly gorgeous to look at.  The scenes set in 15th Century Spain during the Inquisition are brilliantly realised, from the sets and locations, to the costumes and the cinematography, while the bleak greyness of the scenes set in the Abstergo facility in 2016 offer a stark contrast to the warmth and colour of the “genetic memories”.

There are also some very inventive cinematic touches, including a complete redesign of the “Animus” (the technology that allows Callum to relive the “genetic memories” of his ancestor) so that the characters in the present are not simply standing around a bed while Callum’s in the machine (which is effectively what happens in the games).

Credit also needs to be given to the work of the stunt team – as a refreshing change from the CGI-drenched action in some blockbusters, this has plenty of old school “real” stunts, with the fights, parkour and a 125-foot “leap of faith” freefall all performed by stunt men and women rather than digital doubles.

But despite all of that, the film never quite comes together entirely satisfactorily.  I think part of this is due to the film being so dependent on Callum reliving his ancestor’s “genetic memories”, as it’s explained early on that Callum cannot affect the past in anyway, and so he (and the audience) are really just “going through the motions” during the flashback scenes.  He’s only reliving the memories to see where his ancestor hid the “Apple of Eden”, and in truth, all of the memories he witnesses before that point are totally irrelevant to anything that happens.

“…it’s still entirely unclear what the bad guys intend to do…”

Then there’s the “Apple of Eden” itself, which even by the usual standards for a MacGuffin, makes no real sense.  I’m happy to just roll with it when they say that it contains the genetic code for violence, aggression and disobedience, but even if that were true, it’s still entirely unclear what the bad guys intend to do with the genetic code if they get it.

And while the scenes in the past are irrelevant to the plot, the scenes in the present are completely predicable and devoid of any real surprises.  As a general rule, I try never to second-guess where a film is going while I’m watching it (as that takes me out of the movie), but it was so blatantly obvious what was going to happen once Callum met the other test subjects, it was impossible not to predict how the whole film was going to play out.

“…it works as a visually impressive, stunt filled, historical action flick…”

As a scene-setter for a potential franchise, it does the job – and I would genuinely be intrigued to see where they could go from here.  It would be interesting to see what the war between the Assassins and the Templars looks like in the present, and if they could find a way to make the reliving of Callum’s genetic memories relevant to the plot in the present, even better.

But as a film standing on its own two feet (and at this stage, the likelihood of it getting a sequel is very much up in the air), whilst it works as a visually impressive, stunt filled, historical action flick, it takes itself too seriously to be a fun guilty pleasure, and it lacks the plot coherence or surprises to work effectively as a thriller or mystery.