Assassin's Creed Review

Going into 2016 it was looking like it could be the year we finally got some quality movies based off video game franchises. The first movie I thought would reverse the curse was Warcraft and if you read my review, you know that I did not enjoy that movie at all. Now this week we get the Assassin's Creed movie. This is a movie I was looking forward to mainly because I've played most of the games in the series and enjoy the actors that are starring in it. Unfortunately the video game movie curse continues, because Assassin's Creed is not that good.

The Assassin's Creed movie is about a man named Callum Lynch (Michael Fassbender) who is on death row for murdering someone. The night he is executed, a lady by the name of Sophia Rikkin (Marion Cotillard), actually interrupts it and basically kidnaps him. Sophia informs Callum that the company she works for, Abstergo Industries, needs him to find this ancient artifact, the Apple of Eden. Abstergo wants to use the Apple of Eden to perfect mankind by removing our free will since it is free will that causes humans to be violent to one another. To find the Apple of Eden, Callum must enter a device known as the Animus that will link him up with an ancestor's memories. While in the Animus, Callum gets transported to 15th century Spain and gets to experience what his ancestor, an assassin named Aguilar de Nerha, got to experience.

Now the plot of Assassin's Creed may sound a bit insane, but it does stay pretty accurate to what the video games are like. In each game, you play as a present day character that enters the Animus and then you play as one of his ancestor in some historical time period. Unfortunately for the movie, you spent most of the time with the present day character, whereas in the games you are mainly in the past playing as the ancestor. In fact in the video games, the present day stuff is usually the worst part of the game.

There was one thing that I enjoyed about the Assassin's Creed movie and that was the action. When in 15th century Spain, the action looked and felt like the game. Aguilar and his band of assassin's use a lot of the tactics that are used in the game like running around the city, fighting large groups of bad guys and using hidden blades to silently kill those around them. I felt that the way these action scenes were shot got me engaged in the film and made me feel like a part of the action. I also found that a lot of the parkour stunts were really well done. Unfortunately with these action scenes, they kept cutting back to present day to show Callum in the Animus fighting "holograms" of what Aguilar is actually fighting. This caused the scenes to be pretty jarring.

But, like I previously stated, you don't spend a lot of time in 15th century Spain, so the rest of the movie is completely boring. None of the characters have any depth to them so you never care about what they are doing in the movie. The final act of the movie has these characters that join Callum in the fight against the bad guys, but you never really get to know them. Apparently they are supposed to be other assassins but since you don't spend any time with them beforehand in the movie, so as an audience member you don't really know why you should root for them, other than the fact that they are helping Callum. You also don't really have a reason to root for Callum. At the beginning of the movie you see him as a kid, and then the next time you see him, you are told he is a murderer. You are never shown that he is a guy that is capable of being a hero. Also the main plot point is to find this Apple of Eden artifact. Not once are you shown what the Apple of Eden can do, so you have no reason to believe that it is anything special.

The Assassin's Creed movie is frustrating. The part where it succeeds is also the part where the video games it is based on succeed. Unfortunately, they decided to focus on the boring parts of the game and make that take up over 60 percent of the movie. If they would have stuck with the 15th century Spain time period and focused on the assassin's quest to protect the Apple of Eden, the movie could have been really fun. Instead we get a bunch of uninteresting characters that we don't care about because you never spend any time with them.

I think if you are a fan of the video games, wait to see this when it is available to rent. If you have never played the games or even heard of the games, stay away from this movie, I can't imagine you finding any enjoyment in it.

2 out of 5 Stars