Assassin's Creed Review

PG13: Intense Sequences of Violence and Action, Thematic Elements and Brief Strong Language

20th Century Fox, Regency Enterprises, Ubisoft Entertainment

1 Hr and 56 Minutes

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard,  Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling, Michael K. Williams

REVIEW: It’s December. It’s the best time for movies. When you have all of these award season films does that mean we’ll finally get that good video game adaptation? We’ve been waiting for this film for a long time since it’s announcement and casting. In a year where we had Ratchet and Clank, Warcraft, and The Angry Birds Movie, Assassin’s Creed should be the one to be the first GOOD video game movie right?

WRONG!

Through a revolutionary technology that unlocks his genetic memories, Callum Lynch (Michael Fassbender) experiences the adventures of his ancestor, Aguilar, in 15th Century Spain. Callum discovers he is descended from a mysterious secret society, the Assassins, and amasses incredible knowledge and skills to take on the oppressive and powerful Templar organization in the present day

THE GOOD: The 3D is great. If you are to see this film or dragged to it, the 3D is worth the price of admission. The visual effects are decent and the 3D uses them to good effect. 

Michael Fasbender holds the film together. If you have Fassbender in any film you’ll expect him to put his all into it. Most actors of his caliber would sleepwalk through their roles. Not Fassbender. As incredibly poor as the screenplay is, he does give the best delivery.

THE BAD: It doesn’t matter who you have in a film. It doesn’t matter who does the direction. All that matters is the writing. I cannot emphasize enough, without a good script, there is no good movie. Justin Kurzel who has directed critical hit after critical hit does a great job with his direction in the film. The action sequences are well choreographed and shot where you can at least see the action, but we’ll discuss issues about that later. The real issue with this film is the writing. This film is written by three people (Michael Lesslie, Adam Cooper, Bill Collage) who you can clearly tell didn’t play the game as reference to the film they were writing.  With the only person, I assume who probably did come close was Michael Lesslie who wrote Kurzel’s Macbeth as the other two writers are known for Allegiant and Exodus: Gods and Kings. The story is 35% faithful to the game as the 45% is absolute ridiculousness. The film has a strong opening, but after the 30-minute mark, you finally give up figuring out the film’s story for there is none. I applaud you for even remotely thinking of a plot.

If you are an Assassin’s Creed fan that isn’t betrayed by this film, then I applaud you. This movie doesn’t only prove that video game movies are still terrible, but this dishearteningly gives little to no damns about the gameplay of the source itself. The themes are thinly thing that is faithful to the game, but it doesn’t contain a well-written story. One of the best things to do in Assassin’s Creed is the leap of faith where you dive down from unimaginable heights and land in a haystack. Every scene where Fassbender is high up about to jump I kept whispering “haystack” and the film fails to give that to me. Jesus the Smosh Ultimate Assassin’s Creed 3 music video is a better representation of the game than this two-hour film and that was a 3-minute music video.

One of the biggest sins of the film is the tameness of it. The Assassin’s Creed games are rated M game usually for Blood and Violence. This film embodies a PG13 rating. Even before release that rating was a major turnoff and boy does it show on-screen. This movie features so many deaths that vary from blade slashing to cut throats. As cool it sounds, the film won’t let you enjoy it for it is bloodless as hell. The action is great don’t get me wrong, but it is so dull because it boasts all of these kills but keeps it so tame. What makes it even worse is that some assignations are done in slo-mo. Because of this, the action comes off so stagey that it’s unintentionally laughable which is the wrong reaction the audience should have. This film is named Assassin’s Creed taken from a rated M game. ASSASSIN. Shouldn’t that call for an R rating? Warcraft was a rated T game yet the film managed to show blood and gore every chance it got while maintaining a PG13 rating. 

The film has a talented cast who are ultimately wasted delivering lines that you question making any sense. Every exchange between Cotillard and Fassbender is so worthy of cringe that you feel embarrassed for them delivering this terrible dialogue. You can’t tell if Jeremy Irons is sleepwalking or not as he plays the intelligent CEO of Abstergo which is a performance similar to his earlier one in High Rise. And poor Michael K. Williams who is barely featured in the film. It’s heartbreaking to see this cast wasted, but yet it’s furious to know that Fassbender was an actual producer on this. He is part of the problem for this film’s existence which may take a longer time to forgive since giving that lifelike performance in 12 Years A Slave.

LAST STATEMENT: Dull, stupid, and lacking of real entertainment, Assassin’s Creed is another piece of proof that good video game film adaptations are still nonexistent. When your best video game film adaption of 2016 was The Angry Birds Movie, you know you f’ed up.

Rating: 1/5 | 26%

Super Scene: Leap of a watery faith.