Visitors Review

Alin Radu (2012-05-25 14:37)

Renaissance of film-making?

...probably not, but what a spectacle!You don't have to play the games to appreciate these short films. Theera of the Renaissance is brought back to life in this short butthrilling adventure. The CGI environment is extremely detailed and vivid. Three majorRenaissance cities are shown, Florence, Venice and Rome. Florence, theera's birthplace, is the city with the tradition to cultivate art,science and architecture. Rich families are running the town, one ofthe most successful is the Medici. These families build representativeresidential Palazzos and public buildings such as orphanages andchurches. Rome which becomes a center of art and science a hundredyears after Florence (about the time the short films take place) isdominated by the pope who initiates building and support artists justlike the Medici. This background is metaphorically shown by theconstruction of St. Peter dome. And Venice becoming rich through seatrade, a melting point between Europe and the east (Constantinople isTurkish). The rest of Europe is pretty much stuck in the middle ages. The characters look real and are on a same high level as the fantasticCGI environment. The cast is well chosen, the dialogues plausible andprimal for the story. You cant complain about the costumes neither,somebody intensely studied the time-frame fashion (except of courseGiovanni's stuff which is fictional). The characters look Italian,nobody puts Jake Gyllenhaal into a Persian dress here, promised. Music,camera work and directing are totally fine too. The whole thing is basically a synthesis of live-action and CGI and itworks extremely well. But it is more than that. The gamer will lovethis, it will add a lot of background story to the game experience. Thehistorian will be blown away by the details this thing throws at you. Ijust want to stop the movie for a second and jump in to explore thecityscape (a thing you will actually do in the games). So much happenedin the streets of Florence and Rome, the new age is born here. Beyond this, it is also a good movie but if you review this as amovie/short films keep in mind where it comes from. It comes from acomputer game from which it takes its coolness, its style, itsatmosphere and its story. Don't judge this monster with the attitude ofa conservative film lover. This is probably the best game adaption into film. It just works out.and it also features such a profound confrontation with history andarchitecture that is very rare I proclaim, yes, totally.

Niku H. (2012-05-24 20:35)

interesting and cool

It's a video made very well. At first i didn't know why they evenbother to make this but after i seen it i understand the link betweenthe first Assassin's Creed game and the new one (will be released soon,09.03.2010 on the PC) The atmosphere is surprisingly even better than in the game. The actorsare fitting the role perfectly and the music is great. Search on IMDb,the main actor is really the one who gives life for the main characterin the game. And the role made by him in the movie is flawless. Ifyou're a fan of the game, you must see it.Overall, the best short movie of the year.

bob the moo (2012-05-24 01:10)

A curio for Assassin's Creed completists but not good enough to be more than that

So, this year my girlfriend kindly bought me AC: Brotherhood forChristmas – an easy present for her and one I actually wanted anyway.By luck I had the night of the 26th and the majority of the 27th all tomyself – what better time to get stuck into this game? Well, sadly itwas the PS3 version she ordered in error, so my free time remained justthat – free time. Thinking of the game i took the opportunity to watchthe short film that had accompanied Assassins Creed 2 – something I'dalways meant to watch but never got round to since I'd rather beplaying that great game.The story is a prequel of sorts to Assassin's Creed 2 and, as apromotional tool it makes sense as part of generally feeding thegrapevine with more stuff to talk about. Other games use controversy toget chatter (MW2's airport massacre, Medal of Honor's Taliban etc) soperhaps it should be praised for that, however beyond ease ofproduction, I wasn't really feeling it in the way that I felt thecouple of trailers for AC2. The best bits of the live-action short filmare the same as the moments of style and action from the animatedtrailers and indeed they very much try to look like the game to thepoint that I wondered why an extended computer-animated trailer wasn'tproduced instead of this? The story is fairly secondary here since this"feel" is what the film is all about, so any scene that is about beingan actual "prequel" to the Italy-set part of AC2, is pretty dull andone can feel the film desperate to get to the next stylishly filmed bitof stealth or action. The cast are not bad, but they have nothing to doexcept be live-action version of computer game characters, they don'tperform so much as jump around. This limits the film somewhat and it istherefore hard not to compare it to the beauty of the game, since itlays out its stall as being all about the look and style. Of coursewatching it ahead of the game this may not have been the case butcertainly watching in retrospect it feels very much secondary to thegame and clumsy by comparison.A curio piece for AC completists perhaps but not particularly worthseeing otherwise – and certainly not good enough to distract me fromthe knowledge that I should be playing the game, not watching this!