Never played any of the games this movie is based on, so lowly me I actually have to look at this thing purely from the poiont of view of a movie goer. Okay then, here goes.

Basically, this film is about a guy who gets kidnapped just when he’s being put to death so he can play in a multi-billion dollar video game machine to revive his inner-assassin. In that same facility are a bunch of other people who have been in the same big game machine and already have their inner assassins revived. It all has to do with a rather weak wrap-around plot… but being as how said plot ends up being rather inconsequential, I’ll just be moving on. Anyway, guarding this facilities full of assassins that are being kept prisoner against their wills are a bunch of keystone cops armed with nightsticks; not so much as a taser amongst them. Now, you would think that since they are guarding a bunch of potentially threatning prisoners that the’d be far better armed, but it gets even worse, becauser you see they have a bunch of ancient assassin’s weapons on display in glass cases. This is apparently to stimulate those inner assassin memories, which I suppose is why they’re actually within reach of said assassins.

You can see where this is going, can you?

Our “hero” finishes playing with the big video game, then he and his cohorts grab hold of their ancient “useless” weapons- you know, swords, knives, explosive stuff- make short work of the keystone cops, then escape to retrieve the Apple of Eden (that’s the weak wrap-around plot) from the big bad Templars (who have somehow been responsible for the Spanish Inquisition, while the cult of assassins apparently originated from the Muslims conquoring Spain and are somehow the good guys espousing freedom- History lesson: The Pope appointed the Inquisition to take care of the rampant tide of blasphemers, while the Templars had a falling out with Rome and were actually ambushed by Vatican-backed forces though I don’t know in which year). Oh, we never actually see the Apple do anything more than act like a nightlight- the assassins get it, escape, then end of movie.

Now, the whole plot revolved around some ancient assassin trying to keep the Apple away from the Templars, so he tries to hide it by giving it to someone about to cross the Atlantic Ocean (it’s 1492, so you can probably guess which sailor). Now, me, if this was something I wanted absolutely no person on the planet to have, I’d just wrap a big heavy boulder around it and drop it somewhere around the middle of the Atlantic and be done with it. Of course, we’d have no movie then, which brings up the main problem with this flick: everything is forced. Nothing about this plot flows as a natural result of something. They HAVE to make the guards inept and leave edged toys around to be grabbed, then HAVE to have a weak wrap-around plot, they HAVE to force every single bit of this thing to make it go anywhere.

So, what’s good? Well… the fight sequenceas are good, but then again you could probably just break out a copy of one of the Assassin’s Creed games without the need of the multi-billion dollar game machien they used on the guy in this movie.