Assassin's Creed - Movie Review

Assassins of excitement. 

As I write this, thanks to Assassin's Creed Shadows' positive preview buzz echoing around in my circles, the itch to play an Assassin's Creed game has returned.  I have three of them - Origins, Odyssey & Valhalla - sitting on my shelf but I have yet to actually play them. These three are 30-50 hour long experiences which has put me off a bit. They're not games you boot up on a whim. To scratch that itch, I decided to jump into this world of Assassin´s another way: through the movie. 

It might not be the best introduction to this long-running franchise knowing that it did not review well with fans and critics back in the day but it's only a 2 hour experience. It's a quick and dirty way to get my feet wet, so to speak, and hey: I could've walked away pleasantly surprised. 

The keyword in that sentence is 'could've', as will become clear quite soon. So, without further delay, let's talk about the disappointing Assassin's Creed movie. 

In 2016, Callum Lynch is sentenced to death by lethal injection. Instead of dying, however, Cal wakes up in a secret, high-tech research facility. It turns out, Cal has an ancestor his kidnappers are interested in. Aguilar de Nerha was a member of a Creed of Assassins who, back in 1492, stole the ancient biblical Appel of Eden. Call's kidnappers are after the Appel and have built a machine, the Animus, that can make people relive ancestral memories through genetic memories. By making Call relive Aguilar's life, they hope to learn where the Apple is hidden.

Oh boy. Where to begin. 

The story, the writing, is not very good. The thing that annoyed me the most, hands down, is how much we're stuck in the boring present instead of the good stuff: the Assassins in 1492. Gamers weren't drawn to the series because of all the walking around in corporate hallways talking about all kinds of oblique stuff and yet, that's where a good 70% of this flick takes place. 

These modern-day scenes are so poorly paced, slow and exposition-heavy that they suck all the air out of the room. They try to create this air of mystery and tension but what they actually do is create such a confusing and poorly executed attempt at intrigue that Cal himself summed up the situation best: "What the F* is going on?". 

Watching all of that dialogue full of exposition and attempts at saying something 'profound' about human behaviour with these very vague sci-fi/mythical plot devices felt like trudging through a swamp. Not even the high calibre actours that are Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard and Jeremy Irons can salvage anything. Good actors unable to elevate poorly conceived characters. 

Then there is the rest of the cast. There's a good-sized pool of secondary characters in both time periods but other than the main trio of Cal and the Rikins, the film doesn't do a thing with them. They are there to just... be there. To be other prisoners and be other assassins. 

I don't remember any names or any characteristics; the movie couldn't be bothered with establishing them. That is a problem that's clearer in 1492 than in 2016. It undercuts the 'Creed' aspect of the title. It keeps you from connecting to any of the Assassins like the film clearly intended you to do, judging the path that this plotline takes.

Now that I am on the Creed itself: they're not exactly the good guys here, are they? I mean, they are clearly better than the Templars but to me, they seem like the lesser evil. Their self-mutilating rite of passage, emphasis on love and human connection as weakness and 'the end justifies the means' mentality doesn't exactly entice me to them. 

Even so, the 1492 story is the better part of the movie, hands down, even if it has its own set of flaws. 

I might not care for the Creed but they are undeniably bringing whatever spunk this movie has. I don't care for the cult approach but the Creed's inner workings and effort to secure the Apple are a thousand times more interesting than anything Cal is up to in that medical prison. 

I care more about Aguilar than Cal and his bond with that female Assassin, if underdeveloped, had some promise. The same goes for the rivalry with that Spanish inquisitor who served his role well as a pretty competent and cruel 'mid-boss'. Plus: the action sequences are pretty neat. They suffer from cinematography that doesn't seem to know how to properly capture action sequences in a way that enhances them, but I digress. 

The point is that the action is one of the bright spots of the film. They are well-choreographed and just look plain cool. There's a reason why most shots in the trailer are from the past, the Assassins doing their thing. Even the studio knew that was the good stuff that people wanted to buy a ticket for. 

It's this shot that first tipped me off to the trailer thing I talk about above. 

I especially like the extended parkour sequence. It was a genuinely tense sequence that made for a type of chase sequence I hadn't seen before in a movie. It almost got me invested in the film. Almost. 

All of this makes me wish that the film had flipped the past-to-present ratio. That most time was spent in the past instead of the future. Would that have been more intensive and expensive to pull off due to the sets and costumes? I imagine it would've been, yes, but you would have had a better and more exciting end product. It's also not like they could've cut costs elsewhere. 

Case and point: the Animus. In this movie, it's presented not as an MRI-like machine. No, here it's this giant robotic arm that moves around with the subjects who themselves re-enact every single move their Assassin ancestor made in real time. 

I can't say I like this approach. It feels like your typical 'Hollywood overcomplicates things for a 'cool' visual. It's definitely more dynamic than just a person lying down but I don't think it adds anything to the movie. The film splicing between Aguilar and Call in the Animus doing the same move connects the two timelines more, yes, but whenever they cut from and to the two with this trick it felt very jarring to me. 

Quick note though: the CGI of the Animus is pretty good. You know that the thing isn't really there but there's nothing there that broke the illusion, so to speak. It's all rather convincing. Even better is the CGI they undoubtedly used in the past sequences to create those vistas and erase anything too modern in the backgrounds. So yeah, props for the special effects department. 

Another Hollywood trick I don't like: a muddy colour pallet. Look no further than the Assassin's customers. Predominantly striking white in the games, they're all kinds of browns and greys in the film. It's more realistic I guess but white would've been much more interesting visually. With how overwhelmingly dark and sterile the movie is, that certainly would've been appreciated.  

But, just like the special effects department, the costume department also gets some props from me. I might not agree with the colour palette but the costumes themselves look very well made and authentic to the time period. A time period that felt well realized and unexpectedly authentic in an unexpected way: everyone in 1492 speaks Spanish, subbed for our viewing understanding. Most films would just make the characters speak English here so that was an unexpected, but welcoming, choice on the part of the filmmakers. 

Speaking of how the film is shot I don't find the cinematography all that interesting here. This one is mostly static shots, tracking shots and a bit of shaky came here and there. Not very inspired but not particularly bad either. It did put one thing into focus though: that bird. I didn't do a hard count, but there are at least half a dozen times the movie cuts to an Eagle just flying about. Is that a thing in the games? I see no reason otherwise why the movie would do so. It's not like the bird is owned by the Creed or anything like that. 

Conclusion

The Assassin's Creed movie commits the cardinal sin of movies: it's boring. Even in its best scenes, it just fails to truly grab my attention. It has an uninteresting plot full of exposition and narratives that go nowhere which, by the end, cements itself as all setup and no payoff. The writing is full of people just expositioning and scheming without any effort made to develop these characters. As such, I don't care about them and even the A-list cast of actors here can't do much with the material that they are given. 

This film has some moments of tension and some neat action sequences that are sadly only fleeting. It's not the worst offender when it comes to bad video game adaptations, it's just a snore fest. Don't bother with it, just skip it.