Assassin’s Creed (Review)

I’m a fan of the prolific Assassin’s Creed video game series (I’ve played about five-and-a-half out of the nine games so far), but I wasn’t all that excited about the announced film adaptation, not least because video game properties translated into films have an unfortunate – and seemingly unbreakable – pattern of being utter shit, bar maybe the first Silent Hill.

There’s also the problem that the Creed games’ primary narrative quirk – that whatever historical time period we’re playing in is being experienced as a genetic memory by a character in the modern world delving into their ancestors’ assassin history in order to unlock clues and find macguffins left to us by an ancient, technologically advanced race of god-like beings, while fighting off their sworn enemies, the evil Templars, and try reading that aloud without taking a breath or giggling – is both ridiculous, and works more as a franchise-perpetuating plot device than an engaging narrative catalyst. This kind of thing works in a video game because we’re so engaged in Renaissance Italy or Colonial America or Victorian London that we don’t have to dwell on what got us there, or the vapid modern interludes (more on that later).

But then they hired Aussie Justin Kurzel to direct, Adam Arkapaw (True Detective, Top of the Lake, Snowtown, Macbeth) as Directory of Photography, the director’s brother Jed Kurzel as composer, and a cast that included Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Michael K Williams and Brendan Gleeson, and suddenly, on the strength of all this unflappable talent, here was a film I couldn’t wait to see.

Kurzel’s debut, Snowtown, based on the real-life Snowtown (aka bodies-in-the-barrels) murders in South Australia, is one of the most disturbing and beautiful films I’ve seen in the last decade. His follow-up, a grimy period piece adaptation of Macbeth that, like Snowtown, is equal parts dark, violent, and just incredible to look at, ranks as one of the better cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare to date. So it stands to reason that his take on the popular video game franchise (which borrowed Macbeth’s lead couple in Fassbender and Cotillard) would also be pretty damn good, right?

…Right?

Well, maybe not.

It’s not an infuriating, offensive, Suicide Squad-level disaster by any means, but it’s a bit of a flop considering the talent involved.

Assassin’s Creed takes an interesting tangent from the video game series by giving us both a new historical setting and a new assassin character: 15^th century Spain, and Aguilar de Nerha (Michael Fassbender), respectively. As the film opens, Aguilar is initiated into the Brotherhood of Assassins and their fight against the Templars during, in this case, the Spanish Inquisition. The problem is, we learn virtually nothing about Aguilar as a person, his motivations or reasons for becoming an assassin, even the hint of a backstory. He just runs around a lot and stabs/fights the bad guys.

One of the criticisms levelled at the games is that some of them spent too much unnecessary time in the present day, particularly the earlier games, up until Assassin’s Creed III, which featured boring assassin-descended Desmond Miles going through the motions of a boring story you want to get through as fast as possible in order to return to the real fun, which is the stabby, parkour-happy ancestor. Later games dialled back on these annoying interludes, but for some reason, writers Michael Lesslie, Adam Cooper and Bill Collage decided to let the present day story dominate the film’s screenplay. Fassbender’s Callum Lynch, a death row inmate (but a good one because the guy he’s in jail for killing was a nasty pimp, okay!) whose execution is faked by the shady Jeremy Irons-run Abstergo Industries so they can exploit his genetic memories, is a much more fleshed out character than the rather dull Aguilar, but with only three sections dedicated to the Spanish Inquisition, there’s not exactly much for the latter to do. Besides, this really misses the point of the games, as well as the fun of them.

I can see why the writers chose the structure that they did, with a focus on the modern day character, but either the script needed a lot more work, or there was a lot of post-production cutting going on, or maybe even both. Either way, both parts of the story don’t quite work, and the film’s pacing is all over the place. Both the action and the quieter moments drag on for too long, and the editing needs a lot of work.

On the other hand, there’s a lot to Assassin’s Creed that’s either good or at least not shit. The action’s not exactly mindblowing but it’s competent enough for the most part, and the reliance on practical effects/stunts results in a handful of great set-pieces, including a record breaking leap of faith performed by an actual stunt man. From what I could make out, the costumes, props and sets are all particularly well done. Jed Kurzel’s score is one of the best parts of the film, both haunting and truly intense, and helps bandage over some of those pacing problems. The acting its mostly engaging, too, aside from poor Marion Cotillard being dumped with so much insipid expository dialogue. For some unfathomable reason, though, the filmmakers decided to wash all the colour out with some hideous monotone filter that made me think I’d developed cataracts in the cinema. It’s all dull and grainy and makes what otherwise seems to be a very good-looking film, incredibly ugly.

Every story element here works on its own to some extent – Cal’s Daddy issues and his struggle with the regressions, Aguilar’s sections, the father-daughter tension between Irons’ and Cotillard’s characters, the secondary characters in both timelines, who all seem much more interesting than the protagonist, particularly the charming Michael K Williams and Ariane Labed – but nothing’s ever really fleshed out and, worst of all, there’s no synchronicity (pun not intended) to the film as a whole, no rhythm that might make its other flaws that much more forgivable.

Some of the post-production choices made here, particularly characters who seemed like they should have had much more screen time, seem to stack up to studio interference/cutting – which appears to be the depressing trend with blockbusters lately – and others are just plain bizarre. I feel like if they’d just removed the grainy filter and given the story and characters some room to breathe, this could have been so much better. Assassin’s Creed seems like a good film hiding behind a script in need of editing and an awful colour filter; it’s not exactly a disaster, but it’s just not fun.