Assassin's Creed

This review may contain spoilers!

I should've known better than to start 2017 off with a video game film. I would give Assassin's Creed a 4/10.

Whenever the film delivers scenes from the past the audience is delivered exactly what you would hope from an Assassin's Creed film, intense action, historical intrigue and incredible chase scenes. The fight sequences really stand out, everything feels in motion and the techniques used appear incredibly innovative. The cinematography looks great, we're often treated to large spanning shots which encapture the best of the setting. The special effects are another remarkable visual feat in this film, I particularly liked the memory wraiths Callum fought while inside the Animus. The score does a fairly good job, it serves to heighten the action and also pays heed to the setting it's placed within.

Ariane Labed, who played Maria, really embodies what makes for a good and interesting assassin character; Labed crafts a role who has an intense drive and loyalty to the creed while exposing a few lighter moments of her personal feelings beneath her hard exterior.

However the best performance came from Jeremy Irons, who played Rikkin. As far as antagonists go this role isn't anything out of the ordinary but Irons puts enough hard work in to make him his own. I appreciated his duplicitous nature, how he would manipulate the main character and even his own daughter to achieve his ends; he does not care if that manipulation is lies and tricks or if it were to be through physical torture. Irons presents a man riddled with an ambition for power and a desire to have full control over the Templars, Assassins and the world.

Though the scenes set in Callum's past life are quite interesting there are only about four of them altogether, the film pours all it's energy into less than half an hour of screen time and the rest is a poorly paced stale script. For most of the movie we follow Callum Lynch, who watched his father die as a kid and from that point onwards is never developed any further, we don't see any other dimension of his character than this so it's as if he's lived thirty years of his life in purgatory. The film spends so much time explaining what an Assassin is, what a Templar is, what the Animus does, what the Apple of Eden is, that you get lost in exposition and don't really become invested in the film's stakes nor the character's within the film. The Templar motives get really confusing for the film; they seem to view violence as 'cancer' and so seek to cure the world of it? It honestly would have been much easier if they'd been transparent and said they wanted mass control over the world's population rather than dance around it. I found the subplot with Callum and his father another annoying aspect, it's Callum's only motive for being in this film at all and yet when he's finally confronted by his father there's no satisfying reunion or conclusion to this - the plot wastes the moment and drags itself onwards. Ultimately the pacing in Assassin's Creed was all over the place and wasn't aided by the fact that no attention was really paid to the main or supporting characters. The editing seemed in conflict with the visual style, transitions and cuts coming in at jarring moments more often than not. The soundtrack was a complete mess, the music used in that just seemed out of place in a film about Assassins Creed.

Michael Fassbender, who played Cal Lynch/Aguilar, didn't have the strongest presence in his flashback scenes; furthermore as the main protagonist Fassbender never seemed to connect with the script as his performance didn't feel too consistent from scene to scene. Marion Cotillard, who played Sofia, gave a very stale performance in this film; her constant delivery of exposition coupled with the fact her character's allegiance flip flopped like a dying fish let her role down a lot. Brendan Gleeson, who played Joseph Lynch, honestly had no purpose being in this film; if Lynch's father had to reappear in the film then it should have been Gleeson's son onscreen again rather than suddenly placing a whole different performer in front of the audience. Charlotte Rampling, who played Ellen Kaye, gave a performance that got even more stale than Cotillard's; Rampling's line delivery was horrid and you had to wonder if she even knew what film she was in the way she was talking. Michael Kenneth Williams, Matias Varela and Callum Turner, who played Moussa, Emir and Nathan respectively, were the film's token wasted potential; these were side roles who could have communicated with Callum and explored shared experiences about being inside the Animus but instead they became over the top crazed loons who were in conflict with the film's tone. Denis Menochet, who played McGowen, didn't really have a lot of screen presence in this film; Menochet seemed like one modern day antagonist too many. Essie Davis, Brian Gleeson and Angus Brown, who played Mary Lynch, Young Joseph and Young Cal respectively, provided a very jarring and not completely coherent introduction to the main character of the film's origin; the reappearance of Davis later on just felt even more confusing and unnecessary. Javier Gutierrez, who played Tomas De Torquemada, was a really weak antagonist for the flashback scenes; his quavering delivery meant that he never really felt like he had the importance as the film's big bad. Hovik Keuchkerian, who played Ojeda, had a lot of screen presence but was wasted in this film; he never had enough of a focus in the film to stand out as a big bad and ultimately just felt like the token henchman of the film.