1.0/5
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Marion Coiitlard and Jeremy Irons
Rating: 1 star
Quick take: Absurdly bad!
There are two perspectives to Assassin’s Creed the film. One’s from the view point and experience of a gamer, who’s played the original game and it’s many sequels through the last decade. The other is from the casual movie buff who may or may not be influenced by the game’s history. If you watch the film from the first perspective, years of experience at dealing with Assassin’s Creed’s non-linear timelines and warped sci-fi / fantasy / historical presentation seems authentic enough. But it all goes down the drain when the movie just doesn’t care enough to be intelligent. From the second, more casual perspective, Assassin’s Creed the movie just does not make any sense at all. If the viewer of this film is the average joe who thinks Michael Fassbender could be the future of Hollywood stardom, then this unsuspecting viewer can only give one reaction to the film… WTF!
The new Assassin’s Creed film seems promising because it features Michael Fassbender in the lead. His career has been moving in the right direction ever since he was cast as Magneto a few years ago, in X Men First Class. When Mr Fassbender appears on screen you expect the film to carry a level of emotional and cinematic intelligence. You expect the actor to deliver an intense and yet finely nuanced performance. Sadly, the new Assassin’s Creed movie doesn’t deliver any of that. In fact, this film turns out to be so clichéd and formula driven that sometimes you feel you’re watching a rehash / medley of Prince Of Persia: Sands of Time and Clash Of The Titans. In this movie, Fassbender plays a regular 21st century guy who’s stealthily abducted from his death execution bed and installed into a fancy simulation machine that takes you back to 15th century Spain. Dead man put into a death machine for the vested interests of a corrupt organization that has ulterior motives of world domination. Shoddy sci-fi’s poster boy Sam Worthington’s favourite plot device is put to use in another Hollywood film. Sadly enough, such good actors like Fassbender, Marion Cottilard and Jeremy Irons are reduced to behaving like pseudo-intense Christopher Nolan characters who just don’t have enough character background pages on a 30-page film script. Fassbender is Callum in modern day and Aguilar in the Renaissance period. The actor looks clueless in both iterations of his role.
There’s a lot of parkour inspired action in Assassin’s Creed. Kind of like XXX’s Vin Diesel donning a Monk’s cowl and beating the shit out of random folks back in 15th century Spain. While Michael Fassbender does look good in these action sequences, the film script doesn’t bothering explain why these assassins with super human abilities can behave like they’re inside The Matrix. If someone can run from one tight rope to the other like it were a track and field pitch, there has to be some reason for the suspension of laws of physics. Forget that, the writers don’t even bother explaining why random strangers who have never met before, can suddenly band together like lost brothers and fight to their death. But that’s exactly what happens with Fassbender’s Callum and his unlikely posse of co-prisoners played by Michael K Williams, Michelle Lin and others. They suddenly form an Avengers sort of alliance to fight off a corrupt Illuminati organization.
Assassin’s Creed is a loud, preposterous and extremely pretentious action movie. If you sir through this 2-hour sci-fi cum historical ride, you’ll feel this strong sense of listlessness. As if you just sat through a History lecture in college while under the influence of psychedelic drugs. Kind of like a bad acid trip.
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