Assassin's Creed

Video games have a reputation so terrible that if one should turn out to be somewhat decent, it should in someways be a pleasant surprise or so I thought before watching Assassin's Creed. The reputation had been mixed but I was ready to see if this could break the video game movie curse as it seemed to have all of the right pieces involved from a talented cast that featured Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Rampling, Michael Kenneth Williams and Jeremy Irons, as well being directed by Justin Kurzel, who had just finished his generally well-received adaptation of Macbeth.

My problem with the Assassin's Creed series was that the story sometimes became too fantastical to really care about at times. The first game introduced a prisoner who was being used by an evil corporation to look into his ancestry and find the whereabouts of a powerful item that could change the world, which Kurzel uses as a basis for his film. The best of the original game was how it transported the player fair away back into the past and for the film we have 15th century Spain. Unfortunately, like the game, the best of the film are the parts set in past, which are all too few.

The film offers one historical scene for each of three acts and this would have been fine if the 'present' day scenes offered anything of interest. Fassbender in the lead is good for the most part, as are the supporting cast, but the script is so dry and humourless that it results in a forgettable experience. Macbeth suited this dour approach but this needed some charisma in order to make the story actually compelling.

Kurzel does redeem himself when it comes to the action sequences but these are also very limited and have been butchered in the editing room. There were a few moments where the film shows what it wants to be, paying homage to the video game, as characters leap from roof to roof slaying enemies but it's ultimately a shallow mess. In the right hands, such as Ridley Scott or Paul Greengrass, this could have been truly something to seek out.