Video game movies are often dead before they make it to the screen. It’s hard to compress hours of video game content into a two hour movie and recreate the feeling gamers had while playing it. Assassin’s Creed manages to grab a little bit of the game elements I enjoyed, but done in an over stylized and cheesy way. I’ve never seen so much smoke, dust, or sand during fight sequences as this film utilized. There are some positives so Assassin’s Creed earns the Not a Total Waste of Time rating.
Assassin’s Creed doesn’t deserve your leap of faith
Callum Lynch (Michael Fassbender) awakens in a strange facility after being executed by lethal injection. A company called Abstergo run by Sofia (Marion Cotillard) looks to use his DNA to find a missing artifact. Using a device called the Animus, Lynch is able to relieve memories of an ancestor from five hundred years earlier. Aguilar, an assassin, is tasked with recovering the artifact and Lynch lives through him to track it down.
Fassbender brings a certain credibility to roles like this, but his performance isn’t enough to salvage this film. Yet, he is enjoyable and given a better script and maybe toned down special effects this film could have worked. As a fan of this game franchise for a while, the movie did manage to make me want to revisit the superior storytelling that the game offers. The film’s take on the game’s story feels rushed and a bit erratic. Worse still, the film felt like it was dragging and maybe developing a lot of elements forcefully.
The film misfires at all it tries to achieve
I’m not sure exactly why, but the parts of the film set in Spain during the 1400’s is extremely dusty. It could be smoke or sand, but it is excessive. Maybe director Justin Kurzel wanted it to seem like a dream world because it was a memory. Instead, it made some really cool action sequences harder to see and wrecked what could have been a cool setting. The action sequences weren’t really shot in the best way, nor were they horrible. It just always felt like it was lacking in some impactful way.
The relevance of the story in Assassin’s Creed to today’s time is still there. Which is why I am disappointed it wasn’t better, yet I am also not surprised. If you’re looking for a straight action film with little plot development this isn’t it. If you’re looking for a compelling story with interesting dialogue this isn’t it either. It fails to be great at any one thing, and struggles at being decent as itself.
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