MIchael Fassbender as Aguilar in “Assassin’s Creed”; Kerry Brown/Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation(NEW YORK) — Assassin’s Creed, based on the hit video game series of the same name, is the most stylized terrible film I’ve ever seen.
It’s got Michael Fassbender, one of the world’s great film actors and a two-time Oscar nominee. It’s got Marion Cotillard, an Oscar winner and one of the world’s greatest film actresses. And it’s got Oscar-winner Jeremy Irons, along with a supporting cast of terrific actors, all of whom must have signed on to do this movie without reading the script.
Fassbender is Cal Lynch, who as a young man may or may not have witnessed his father murder his mother. Fast-forward to adult Cal, who’s on death row and whom we watch as he’s executed via lethal injection. Then cut to… some sort of medical facility or hospital room, where Sofia (Cotillard) greets Cal, assuring him that he’s actually alive, but the rest of the world thinks he’s dead.
Sofia’s been researching how to get rid of man’s impulse toward violence. To further her research, she needs to hook Cal up to a piece and technology called the animus, which reads the history embedded in a person’s DNA and then forces that person to relive and participate in his ancestor’s history. It’s like a jacked-up Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.
In Cal’s case, the animus takes him to 1492 Spain, where, for all intents and purposes, he becomes his ancestor — a bad-a** assassin named Aguilar. He and his fellow assassins are the guardians of the Apple of Eden, a thing that will unlock the secrets of free will. I think. I’m not really sure. All I know is Sofia and her dad (Jeremy Irons) need that Apple, because it turns out they’re templars, of course, and the templars are the sworn enemies of the Assassin’s Creed, doncha know!
In the filmmakers’ defense, there’s decent fight choreography here and stunning CGI. What there isn’t, is much of a story. That’s because character development is integral to a good story, and the character development here mostly involves lots of emoting and preening. It’s all fun to look at but there’s nothing that will make you care about the characters, or really make you want to see things through to the climax, which feels completely emotionally detached from the rest of the picture.
Assassin’s Creed is easily the worst movie Fassbender and Cotillard have ever participated in, and given that they’re both terrific actors, I can only fault them for choosing so poorly.
One-and-a-half out of five stars.
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