'Assassin's Creed' a convoluted, joyless film

In “Assassin's Creed,” a shadowy organization saves a death-row inmate so he can unlock the memories of his 15th-century ancestor Aguilar to find the location of an apple that contains the genetic code to free will ... or something. There have surely been sillier film premises, but I'm hard pressed to think of anything as convoluted and, in the end, as joyless as this.

“Assassin's Creed” attempts to give a serious narrative origin story to the popular video game. It also aims to provide an emotional entryway into understanding the ancient conflict between the Templars, who want order, and the Assassins, who have sworn to preserve free will, through the story of Cal Lynch.

We meet Cal as a kid - a troublemaker who bikes home to find his mother dead. His father, sporting a dramatic hooded cape, is there with a knife and tells Cal that he needs to get out and “live in the shadows.” Then government types storm the house as Cal escapes on the rooftops.

The next time we meet up with Cal, he's grown into Michael Fassbender and is on death row for murder. His last words are that he'll see his dad in hell, but he wakes up in an operating room where Sofia (Marion Cotillard) explains that her company faked his death and now he's going to work for her and her father (Jeremy Irons). Cal attempts to escape in the first of at least three unintentionally hilarious slow mo sequences, but to no avail. They soon hook him up to a contraption that takes Cal back to 1492 Spain - basically into a video game - where he and his fellow Assassins hunt down the Apple of Eden.

It's all so relentlessly dumb. In the end, the real mystery is why so many talented actors thought this was a good idea.