Assassin's Creed (Justin Kurzel, 2016)

I confess that I haven't played the game that this is based on, but I bet it was not only more fun but more coherent. The plot, for those who would care, has a man sent back into the body of his 15th-century ancestor, a member of a sect seeking to keep the Apple of Eden, which contains the genetic code for free will, out of the hands of the Templars. That it manages to make every aspect of this fantastically uninvolving is quite a feat, preferring instead to have Michael Fassbender as the protagonist hack, kung fu and parkour his way through the mire for two hours while the rest of the criminally misused principal cast - Cotillard, Irons, Gleeson and Rampling - have to stand around delivering ridiculous lines robotically.
The fact that a film that is ostensibly about the fight for free will should move in a more mechanically predestined way than the sandbox game is staggeringly ironic. Likewise, despite the use of dramatic real-world locations across Spain, you feel that you're in a more confined environment than a virtual one is, with mist and shadow draped over everything for no good reason, as if reality was too expensive to animate. Beyond that, even the interminable fight scenes are dull and so poorly put together that it's largely impossible to follow what's happening at any given moment.
Finding out that the man who directed both Fassbender and Cotillard in the previous year's rather impressive adaptation of Macbeth was actually behind this turgid mess is the icing on the cake of its nonsensicality. It must surely have been a joke on the studios and easily-led game fanboys. Unfortunately, it's not a very funny one.

3/10