Review: Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed may be one of the better film adaptations of a video game franchise. Not necessarily because it boasts a cast containing two Oscar winners and two Oscar nominees (a film of this ilk doesn't require a great deal of heavy lifting, acting-wise) as well as a very talented director in Justin Kurzel, who brought forth last year's overlooked Macbeth. Rather, it succeeds because it is both deeply serious and silly about itself.

Michael Fassbender pulls triple duty as Callum Lynch, Aguilar de Nerha and Callum embodying Aguilar. Let us untangle by going back several centuries, specifically to 15-century Spain during the Inquisition where two secret societies battle one another to claim "The Apple of Eden," which reportedly holds the secret to keeping people under control. Aguilar is one of the Assassins, the last one known to have had the sought-after relic in his possession and who has vowed, along with other members of his brotherhood, to keep it away from the clutches of the Knights Templar, who seek the Apple in order to cleanse people of their own free will.

Fast forward to the present-day where career criminal Callum is awaiting execution for murdering a pimp. Instead of dying when he is given a lethal injection, he awakens to find himself in a Madrid-based research facility owned by Abstergo Industries, the modern-day incarnation of the Templars. He is a particularly valuable figure for the company's CEO Alan Rikkin (Jeremy Irons) as Callum happens to be a direct ancestor of Aguilar's. Rikkin's daughter, Sofia (Marion Cotillard), has devised an apparatus named the "Animus," which can access a person's genetic memory. By strapping and plugging Callum into what is essentially a VR machine from hell, Rikkin hopes to tap into Aguilar's memories in order to discern the location of the Apple.

Philosophical implications aside - Callum points out that free will does allow for a violence that can be passed from generation to generation, whilst Sofia wishes to eradicate free will in order to bring about a peaceful society - there's no escaping the fact that Assassin's Creed is pure hokum and predominantly incomprehensible hokum at that. Screenwriters Bill Collage, Adam Cooper and Michael Lesslie are all aware of this as the script unhesitatingly and slyly acknowledges the confusion. Nevertheless, such unclarity doesn't prevent one from enjoying the action-heavy medieval sequences which track Aguilar and his fellow Assassins as they race from one frenzied scene to the next.

Fassbender, as ever, makes for a compellingly watchable figure even if Callum and especially Aguilar are little more than ciphers. Reunited with their Macbeth director, he and Cotillard once again make for an intriguing match - both possess a dark sensuality that intensifies in each other's presence. Kurzel frames each scene like the most sombre of Renaissance paintings tinged with German expressionism. This reunion may not be on par with Macbeth, but one does hope that Fassbender, Cotillard and Kurzel team up again - perhaps for a period romance? - in the near future.

Assassin's Creed

Directed by: Justin Kurzel

Written by: Bill Collage, Adam Cooper and Michael Lesslie

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling, Michael Kenneth Williams, Denis Menochet, Essie Davis, Callum Turner, Carlos Bardem