#1 ASSASSIN'S CREED

Starring Micheal Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling and Michael K. Williams. Written by Michael Lesslie, Adam Cooper and Bill Collage. Based on the video game franchise published by Ubisoft. Directed by Justin Kurzel. Budget $125 million. Running time 116 minutes. Certificate 12a.

Hooray, it's a new year! I can't wait to see what exciting new films there are to wash away the mainly foul taste of 2016 from my cinematic palette! I bet the Michael Fassbender produced affair that is Assassin's Creed will restore my faith in cinema! I mean the games were great fun, all that running around killing people and climbing up tall building to jump off them while performing stunts, great fun! Just don't ask me what the plots were about cos I always fast forward through the cut scenes so I have no idea, and besides we all know that games don't have plots!

But enough of all that, what about the film!

Well, congratulations 2017 you've clearly started as you mean to go on with another huge dollop of cinematic meh. Welcome to Assassin's Creed the movie, a murky dirge of brownish, greyish sludge with a group of moping, gloomy grumps who never learned to smile let alone laugh. It's directed methodically and shot almost entirely in slow-motion, all the action is anyway, as is all that jumping off stuff, or at least it felt that way. Likewise, everyone talks quietly and no one ever bloody smiles, like not even once! No, these guys are really serious, there's just no time for fun when you're doing parkour in olden days Spain and stabbing dudes in faces and shit. But every week on You've Been Framed we get to watch wanky parkour runners fall face first into stuff, and that's bloody funny! But not for the Bottom Creed, they never fall over, not once, not ever.

The plot, well I'm not sure I can summarise it well enough to do it justice but I'll give it a go. There's this bloke played by Micky Faceblender whose name is Ass Creed and he's recruited by this big super powerful organization, which has a 2 billion dollar a year budget to help them locate the apple that Adam and Eve ate, to do this they have to use the descendant of a dead assassin from the time of the Spanish Inquisition who stole or hide the apple. And that's where Mike Bassblamer comes in, you see not only is he a direct descendent but so were his parents, grandparents, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces, or so it seems. Anyway, Jeremy Irons and his daughter Marion Cotillard (I'm sure they have proper character names, but I can't remember) run this super secret base from the middle of Madrid and they attach Mike Bassfender to this very large trash picker and shine 30 watt bulbs in his eyes. This allows Mick Massmender to relieve all the murdering he did back in the good old days while he was a member of the Arse Creed. Meanwhile Jezer and Marrion have also recruited all the other descendents of the A-hole Creed and they don't want Mikel Fastsender to help for some reason, don't care, can't remember. After that lots of waffle about stuff and free will and then Charlotte Rampling turns up and spouts bollock about Apples and pears and it all ends with people leaping off buildings while the Eagles play Hotel California.

ANYWAY, there's lots of eagles soaring over dusty Spain and lots of hoodies doing parkour while stabbing people, it's all very serious and very, very earnest and I'm sure it's the first part of a much need new franchise, because if there's one thing this new cinematic year is crying out for it's a new movie franchise!

In a nutshell, this is a dusty, dull, dreary dirge which ends up with lots of stabby stab-stab. If you've played the games then don't worry this hasn't ruined those for you, and if you haven't, then I don't know if not playing them will damage your enjoyment. Either way, it's probably far more fun playing the games then watching this poe-faced, stupidly serious, shit.

3/10