ASSASSIN'S
CREED
2016, PG-13, 115 mins. Michael Fassbender as Callum Lynch / Aguilar / Marion Cotillard as Dr. Sophia Rikkin / Michael Kenneth Williams as Moussa / Brendan Gleeson as Joseph / Jeremy Irons as Alan Rikkin / Ariane Labed as Maria / Callum Turner as Nathan / Denis Ménochet as Abstergo Güvenlik Müdürü / Matias Varela as Emir / Brian Gleeson as Young Joseph Directed by Justin Kurzel / Written by Adam Cooper, Bill Collage and Michael Lesslie |
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It's not that ASSASSIN'S CREED is a bad or incompetent film, nor is it lacking in definitive and proven talent in front of and behind the camera. No, this latest in an awfully long lineage of wrongheaded video game to movie adaptations suffers greatly in its inability to make me care for anyone or anything in its story. Based on the massively popular - and sometimes notoriously
glitchtastic - action adventure game series from Ubisoft -
ASSASSIN'S CREED has a bona fide artist helming it all in director
Justin Kurzel (see last year's MACBETH
for proof of that) and multiple Oscar nominated actors spearheading the
charge (like Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, both of whom also
appeared in MACBETH).
The pieces are in place here for a remarkably promising film, but
the results are so emotionally cold and dramatically distancing that
I had to remind myself that what happened in its narrative...mattered. I'm a lifelong
video game-aholic.
It's my second major love affair outside of the cinema.
I'm also not one of those pompous windbag elitist film critics that
don't believe that a video game can indeed be art.
That would be silly.
There's ample and tremendous artistry that has gone into the
multiple iterations of the ASSASSIN'S CREED video games series and, yes,
this film, if anything, is an unqualified technical masterpiece at times. Yet,
even the prettiest video games can be a slog to play through with shoddy
storytelling that doesn't make you give a hoot, which is precisely what's
wrong with this big budget silver screen version.
There's simply no joyous life or energy in modest dosages on
display here: Kurzel's film
takes itself as seriously as a proverbial heart attack.
The relentless tonal bleakness in ASSASSIN'S CREED is mightily
off-putting throughout, especially considering its fantastical - and let's
be honest, silly -
premise.
This film isn't as mindlessly soulless as, say, the recent HITMAN:
AGENT 47 from last year (also based on a video game), but it most assuredly lacks heart. The film opens
with a considerable amount of expositional goobledygook presented on
obligatory white text on a black screen that explains an ageless war between
the Knights Templar and the Assassin's Creed over an artifact called
"The Apple of Eden" (yes, that Eden), which the Knights believe
contains the genetic blueprint for free will and possession of it, in
turn, will allow for them to quickly eradicate violence on the planet
(yeah, I'm still trying to figure this one out).
The problem for the Knights Templar is they have no idea where in
the hell the Apple of Eden is, which makes their massive global plan to
eliminate worldwide violence all the more challenging.
It appears, though, that the Knights Templar are able to deduce
when the object was last seen...in 15th Century Spain and in the hands on
one particular assassin. The film also
introduces us to death row inmate Cal Lynch (a distractingly monotone
Fassbender) that's about to be executed via lethal injection for his
murderous crimes.
Yet, instead of dying he's secretly recruited by a group of
scientists with intimate ties to the Knights Templar, Alan Rikkan (an
utterly wasted Jeremy Irons) and his daughter Sophia (Cotillard, equally
squandered).
They have a somewhat laughably complex scheme that involves Cal
securing the location of the Apple of Eden: They will connect him to a
massive virtual reality-like device that can whisk his consciousness back in time
and into the mind and body of his distant ancestor, who was the
afforementioned 15th Century assassin that has ties to the location of the
Apple of Eden (think QUANTUM LEAP meets THE MATRIX).
Cal isn't technically time traveling in corporal form, but rather
is leaping into spirit of his ancestor and re-living his memories.
Now, this premise
is, as stated, ludicrous, but it's also engagingly inventive and kind of
ingenious.
On a positive, the mythology of the ASSASSIN'S CREED video game
series is densely ambitious, which makes any attempt to appropriate it for
movie consumption all the more daunting.
Kurzel, if anything, seems enthusiastically equal to the task and takes
laborious pains to makes sure that his film adaptation is a visual marvel
to behold.
Simply put, this film looks stupendous, especially the sequences in
the distant past, which features Fassbender inhabiting his centuries old
relative in
sequence after sequence that's positively dripping with sumptuous period
detail. I
also appreciated the fact that all of these moments in Spain of the late
1400's are done in Spanish, which certainly aids the film's stark
verisimilitude.
Every time ASSASSIN'S CREED ventures into the past its stunningly
engaging. Everything else
built around these scenes, however,
fall resoundingly flat.
There's simply no one that commanded nor deserved my rooting
interest in the story, especially the main "hero" Cal, who is a
convicted murderer, a plot point that's frequently and conveniently not
adequately dealt with.
This is also not assisted by Fassbender's uncharacteristically flat
and stilted performance that's so relatively charm free that you're left
kind of bewildered as to why an actor of his acclaimed stature saw this as a savory
part to inhabit (Fassbender inexplicably serves as producer
here too).
Cotillard fares no better in a larger underwritten part...and ditto
for Irons, who's ostensibly called upon to deliver solemn line
readings and look sinister in his dark turtle necked attire.
For as technically astounding as ASSASSIN'S CREED is as an
impressive odyssey of awe inspiring sights, it's kind of a failure at employing
its
A-grade talent to their fullest.
None of these performers appear emotionally invested at all in
their respected characters.
The people that populate this film are mechanical
engines that are designed to dispense key plot details...and very little
else of substance.
That, and the
film's MacGuffin of the Apple of Eden is nonsensical hooey.
The script never fully explains what this ancient apple does, how
it contains the "genetic blueprint to human free will," or how
it can even be wielded (and by whom) to eradicate humanity's free will to
curtail blood-lusting violence everywhere.
All in all, it's a simplistically rendered item that everyone wants
that figures into everyone's agendas.
ASSASSIN'S CREED really becomes unglued during its third act,
during which time its science fiction meets faux history yarn seems to be
spending an awful lot of time serving as a lead in to future franchise installments
to come without even bothering to deliver an exciting and fully cohesive
first film with some semblance of a beginning, middle, and end.
Why do so many films as of late make this categorical
creative blunder of being too forward thinking and not focusing in on the
now? ASSASSIN'S CREED, to be fair, is one of the most impressive looking video game adaptations that I've ever seen. Kurzel, as demonstrated to bravura effect in MACBETH, can be a bona fide painter with his camera. Unfortunately and rather depressingly, ASSASSIN'S CREED is a sumptuously dazzling exercise in technical filmmaking craft that's kind of D.O.A. in terms of story and characters. When the film is not being incessantly convoluted with its own wobbly world building, it's glaringly unsuccessful at populating its narrative with personas that have weight and consequence. I felt like I was being annoyingly and coldly held back at an arm's distance from becoming fully enraptured in this unique world. The finest video games that I've played were, for lack of a better word, fun. ASSASSIN'S CREED is so dour and morose that it forgets to have fun.
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