Assassin's Creed
Justin Kurzel
The story: Sentenced to death by lethal injection, criminal Callum Lynch (Michael Fassbender) wakes up instead and finds himself in a facility run by scientist Sofia Rikkin (Marion Cotillard) and her father Alan (Jeremy Irons) of Abstergo Industries, the modern-day incarnation of the Templar Order. They are after the Apple of Eden, a powerful object last handled in 15th-century Spain by assassin Aguilar de Nerha (Fassbender) – whose memories can be accessed by Callum. Based on the video game franchise of the same name, in which the Assassins fight for peace with free will and the Templars want peace through control.

There is something interesting going on here.
The names for this project read like a dream combination for an indie arthouse flick.
Indeed, director Justin Kurzel had just worked with actors Fassbender and Cotillard on a well-received adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (2015).
And then we have Oscar winner Irons, Emmy winner Brendan Gleeson and film festival favourite Charlotte Rampling.
But wait, this is a video game adaptation.
Despite an attempt to give this lightweight movie a heavyweight makeover, Assassin’s Creed ends up being a failed experiment.
It is both unnecessarily complicated and ridiculously simplified at the same time.
For all the powerful technology that Abstergo Industries has at its disposal, it is unable to fast forward to the exact moment when Aguilar last had possession of the Apple. Instead, the key moments of his life – which are now Callum’s memories – are helpfully converted into a technicolour film we can all watch.
It is also necessary for Callum to be strapped into a machine so that he can act out each gesture in his past life as he recalls it. Can the film be more literal?
Then there are the protracted speeches about the nature of free will and the relationship between genetics and the propensity for murder, which are not only tedious, but also mostly sound like hogwash.
What a waste of the killer line-up assembled.
(ST)