assasinStarring Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Charlotte Rampling

Directed by Justin Kurzel

Fox, out 1 January (UK), out now US

For centuries, the order of the Templars have sought the mysterious Apple of Eden, intending to use its power to remove free will from humanity and achieve true compliance. Only the Assassins have stood in their way. Now, a man descended from the bloodline of the Assassin’s Creed ventures into his ancestor’s memories to try and retrieve the Apple from its ancient hiding place at the behest of the mysterious Abstergo Foundation, who want the Apple’s powers to cure violence from humanity. But is all that it seems?

Full disclosure: I have only ever played the very first Assassin’s Creed videogame, briefly, many years ago. I had hoped that this remove from the minutiae of the source material might prove a help in seeing the movie on its own merits. Unfortunately, those merits proved elusive.

Let’s start with the plot. Or rather, the collection of half-baked, overblown, pseudo-historical mysticism related to the audience by text on the screen, over-earnestly delivered hokum dialogue in the ‘present’ and clunky expository dialogue delivered in the ‘past’, which together attempt to pass themselves off as plot.

In a scene which foreshadows the course of the entire movie, we open on a shot of a boyhood Callum (Fassbender’s central protagonist) attempting to jump his bike across a large gap, failing, and landing in a pile of mattresses. What this is supposed to tell us about the character is unclear, because the next scene just throws itself into another ‘plot’ development and the bike-based antics are utterly forgotten, never to be mentioned or referenced again.

By the time Fassbender wakes up at the institute 30 years later, having been rescued from his lethal injection execution for murder (of one man, who from the sound of it was himself a criminal) and Cotillard is there beginning her first in a series of explanations that explain nothing, the film is already veering dangerously close to nonsense. Unfortunately, it then drives straight off that edge and into utter inanity. There’s a point, about thirty minutes in, where Fassbender’s character asks himself ‘What the f**k is going on?’ in response to another obscure conversation with a fellow inmate which it feels like the script wants the audience to have understood, without having provided any assistance in doing so. At that point, I felt closer to Callum than any other juncture in the film.

Of course, we get the nods to the games – the ‘animus’ (here a giant robot arm from which Callum is dangled as he goes through the motions of reliving his ancestor’s adventures). The idea of a bloodline connecting the present to the past. The order of Assassins themselves and their long battle against the Templars. A breathless, wide-eyed delivery of the line ‘The leap of Faith’ from Cotillard.

The problem is that much of this feels like that nonsense exchange which prompted Callum’s profane outburst to himself – as if the writers just assume that the audience will understand and buy into it without being given any explanation or reasons for doing so. Why does the Animus work? How does it connect the person with their past? Why is it necessary to give Callum a pair of wrist blades actually taken from his ancestor’s grave when it’s all a VR experience? Why can Callum see his Ancestor’s ghost and fight with him when outside the Animus? Why does every trip into the Animus immediately put Callum in a significant spot of his ancestor’s life, as opposed to when he was popping to the loo, or a point where he was a baby? And why did so many other inmates have to be used to get to the point of Callum being the final piece of the puzzle? These, and many, many other questions formed in my mind as I sat, utterly unengaged by the action on the screen, and not one of them was answered.

The movie is at its strongest when in the historical sequences showing the Assassins fighting against the Templars in Inquisition-era Spain. Beautiful sets and gorgeous costuming combine to produce a decent sense of atmosphere (though the Templars’ thugs leave a little to be desired) but the film fails even these sequences in two irreversible ways. Firstly, the choppy style of the cutting in the fight sequences themselves makes it impossible most of the time to actually see what is going on. Second, the film insists on continually cutting back to modern day Callum, swinging about on a giant metal arm in a lab with ghostly after images of his foes half visible. It robs the historical scenes (of which there are precious few) of their immersion, jarring the viewer between past and present in a way that destroys any attempt at narrative flow.

Rampling, Irons and a criminally underused Brendan Gleeson mumble through nonsense dialogue as if they are reading it for the first time from an autocue just off camera. Fassbender basically does his usual schtick, all bared teeth, snarls and one embarrassing ‘he’s losing it’ sequence of full throated and tuneless song. Meanwhile, Cotillard just looks as if she would rather be anywhere else. Events happen with no discernible order or logic, and by the time the movie gets to its finale, you’re no longer bothered at the utterly bizarre sequence of events, the inexplicable 180 flip of one character or the dozens more unanswered questions and holes in the narrative. By that point, the movie has numbed you to these things, and the adorable attempt at setting up some semblance of motive for a sequel before the credits roll elicits a condescending chuckle rather than a despairing moan. Even in ending, the movie feels less like it has reached narrative completion, and more like the whole crew have just given up and want it to be over.

Verdict: Taking a film with this cast, and this many potentially fascinating elements and making something this dull and uninspired takes some serious effort. Fans of the franchise may find delight in certain shots/ideas they recognise. Anyone else will be confused and bored in equal measure. 2/10

Greg D. Smith