Assassin's Creed

As a young boy Callum Lynch witnessed his father murder his mother. Now, 30 years later, he is being executed for murder. However, the execution is faked and, instead of dying, he is transported to a special facility. It turns out that he is descended from a 15th century master-assassin, Aguilar, a member of the Assassin's Brotherhood. The plan is to train him in the ways of his forefather. This will enable him to fight the arch-enemy of his forefather, the Templars.

Great cast, very weak script. Plot is very basic and much of the movie consists of predictable, well-choreographed fight scenes. The writers try to throw in some intrigue and purpose by introducing the Apple of Eden but it is a fairly weak plot device.

Great cast - Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling - but these talents are all wasted due to the action-driven, no-substance script. Michael Fassbender can only blame himself for appearing in such a piece of crap - he co-produced the movie.

It's a movie based on a game so it will never be good anyway. In that respect then, it features a cast that is too good, and a thoroughly confusing plot. Given Ubi Soft and their involvement, a broken and unfinished product is something they are fantastic at giving us and this film doesn't disappoint in that regard.

I have not played the Assassin's Creed games. However, this movie did not make me feel as though I needed to have played them in order to understand or enjoy the film.

The cinematography was great, and there were some magnificent aerial views of 15th century Spain along with modern day. Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard both gave excellent performances, managing to deliver the occasional corny, melodramatic dialogue with poise, and the supporting cast were equally great in their roles. Despite the occasional cheese, this film had some excellent dialogue that were thoughtful and poignant - unexpected in a fantasy action movie! Speaking of action - this was the best part of the movie. Gorgeous choreography, and I loved all the various weaponry and free running.

This is by no means an award winning film, but overall it was incredibly enjoyable, and I don't think it quite deserves the negativity critics and fans of the games are giving it.

This movie was just confusing, man.

I understood most of it due to me having played the games, but even some of the sequences that were flashing back and forth had me super confused. It was clearly made with the intent of becoming a series, which left it with such an unsatisfying ending to the story.

I felt like it was short for how much they put in there; I really liked the way Fassbender was playing the main character of Cal, with a sort of insane twist to him due to the Animus side-effects. However, this was not explored enough and the connection between him and his ancestor made no sense, especially with its culmination toward the end. In the game series, this connection between the Animus user and the ancestor is explored in much more depth, and I feel like the film attempts to capture some of that emotion and condense it way too much to come across as anything meaningful.

As a fan of the game series, my expectations were quite high. I was therefore pleased to see that a lot of the movie can be related back to the games. The story features are similar as well as the historic atmosphere. The fighting scenes are nicely shown, but are a bit to dominant throughout the entire movie. The depth of the story can be better as well.

The actors do a good job, but there isn't much time to really get to know them.

All in all, a movie that did not disappoint me as an Assassins Creed fan, but not the best movie of the year either.