Assassin's Creed

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling, Michael Kenneth Williams
Directed by: Justin Kurzel
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
2016

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: An ex-convict (Michael Fassbender) is used by a secret group to relive the genetic memories of his ancestor in 15th century Spain.

Review:

Tim: I suppose the greatest achievement of Assassin's Creed is to explain this convoluted, kind of crazy plot to someone who never played the video games. I'd always heard good things about the games, but I had no idea what they were about. The idea of a guy reliving the genetic memories of his ancestor is a pretty crazy story, but the movie does a good job of setting it all up for us novices. It still seems a little ridiculous to me, but at least I understood the logic of this world. I'm honestly a bit surprised that the movie pulled it off. That being said, you can't really claim this is a good movie. It's a decent film, but it's yet another failed video game adaptation.

It genuinely felt like Michael Fassbender wanted this movie to work. I know he was instrumental in the production and his performance felt like someone who believed in what he was doing. He actually does give a fairly strong performance. He had to sell some fairly outlandish things, so the fact that he went all into this character and world helped. I'd say this is one of the stronger video game adaptation performances I've seen- Fassbender was clearly not just here for a paycheck, which is a huge compliment. I liked Marion Cotillard, although I'm not entirely sure she fit within the movie. She was good, but I didn't believe her performance to the same extent. It was good seeing Jeremy Irons- it felt like he was slumming just a bit here, but the guy is such a talented actor, he makes the movie better. I also loved seeing Brendan Gleeson, I just wish he had more screen time. When you add in Charlotte Rampling and Michael Kenneth Williams, this is one of the better casts of video game adaptation movies we've seen.

The story might be a little bonkers, but it does allow us to watch some really cool assassin sequences in 15th century Spain. We certainly haven't seen that very much in movies, and that emerges as the coolest, most entertaining part of these films. While the laws of physics may occasionally get stretched, I mostly had great fun watching the action sequences in this movie. They were entertaining, exciting, and fast paced. The issue is that I wanted to spend more time in the past. Whenever the sequences ended and we were brought back to the present day, it felt like the movie slammed on the breaks. The contemporary scenes were never as compelling as the assassin scenes. Unfortunately, we spent too much time in the present day.

As I said, the movie does a good job of explaining the whole world and the crazy technology being used. The whole thing was hard to believe and illogical, so it required a pretty big suspension of disbelief. The movie was a bit long at 1 hour, 55 minutes.

I will say that Assassin's Creed was a fairly decent movie. If you're willing to go along with it, it does reward you with some exciting action scenes and a strong performance by Fassbender. However, the movie wasn't as good as it needed to be. I know they planned to make more films, but we'll have to see if that actually happens. I wouldn't be totally opposed to it, but I'd also wait for DVD.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6.5



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