Assassins Creed ultimately unsatisfying
The film is packed with special effects and long winded technical chase and fight scenes, clearly shot to remind viewers of the moves they executed while playing the games.
SECUNDA – With all the financial risk involved in producing a film, it is no wonder that many film studios opt to bankroll story lines with a ready-made audience of loyal supporters.
Taking into account the above, there is no fan-base more loyal than those hardcore gamers who have stuck with a game through its nearly 20 incarnations, from brotherhood, to revelations, to rogue, unity and many others.
In the same line as the games, the film, Assassins Creed, begins with a man who has fallen on hard times and who seems to be at the end of his line.
Cal Lynch (Michael Fassbender) wakes up after his apparent execution, to find himself the prisoner of Abstergo, a corporation run by the Knights Templar.
He is forced to relive the genetic memories of his ancestor, who was an assassin, by being hooked up or plugged into a machine called the Animus.
By being forced to relive these memories, Abstergo hopes to use Cal to find the long lost Apple of Eden, an object that can be used to control free will.
As far as video game pre-story goes, this would have been fine, as it sets the tone for a lot of intriguing, fast paced and self driven game play.
What Ubisoft did right in the games – create a massive interactive world, with interesting side quests and a brilliant park, our inspired game-play that kept me entertained for hours as I leapt from rooftop to balcony to duomo in Florence and Rome and Istanbul – was the very downfall of this film.
Instead of spending time on the characters and dialogue, the filmmakers use Fassbender as a crowd pleaser, with his shirt off, a few days of stubble and a steely glint in his eyes, fumbling through interactions just to get to the point where he can run and jump and kick and do what action heroes do best.
Despite the valiant efforts of Marion Cotillard and Jeremy Irons as father-daughter duo Abstergo executives, this film falls flat faster that an assassin who misjudged his leap of faith.
Perhaps if the writers had gone with one Ezio Auditore Da Firenze and cast someone witty as Leonardo Da Vinci and there was some proper dialogue, this film could have been saved.
Even Altaïr Ibn-La’ahad in ancient Jerusalem would have been an improvement on the underdeveloped overly aggressive Aguilar De Nerha portrtayed by Fassbender.
The film is packed with special effects and long winded technical chase and fight scenes, clearly shot to remind viewers of the moves they executed while playing the games.
Aguilar and his cohorts assassinate Templars with hidden blades from balconies and then flee over rooftops, but without my master-race tools of mouse and keyboard, it is like watching your brother play – fun for a bit, but ultimately unsatisfying.
