Infinite // Movie Review
Infinite directed by Antoine Fuqua, is based on a novel, The Reincarnationist Papers, and we get some very obvious narration at the beginning to tell us that we are living in a world where reincarnation is real, and there are a group of people known as infinites who are able to recall, have total recall, if you will, of all of their past lives. And there are two groups within the infinites.
There are the Believers who believe that they should be doing everything they can to utilize their gifts to help humanity, and the Nihilists, who of course would believe in the opposite. So then we meet a man, well it starts out in Mexico City in what were called the past life. There's a dangerous car sequence, Dylan O'Brien plays a man named Eirik, who has a device called the egg that somebody named Bathurst, played by Rupert Friend, and extreme flashbacks we learn, extremely limited flashbacks if you, I mean, and it's trying to stop these nihilists from getting this egg, although at this point we don't really know what it can do.
Flash forward to the current life and we meet Evan, played by Mark Wahlberg, who's a man that has always believed he's been schizophrenic because he has such vivid memories, these hallucinations that seem like their memories, but obviously can't be in the mortal realm. But in all actuality, he is the reincarnated version of Eirik. What happens is he has to go to the black market to buy his anti-psychotics and there's an altercation with some drug dealers and he, one of his past lives was a swordsman and he makes these swords that are of a technique only used in Edo Japan.
The cops find him after he decimates this drug dealer and his cronies and then the factions of infinites are aware that Treadwell has been reincarnated and now will be able to reveal where this device is, a doomsday device if you will. So we have Toby Jones and Chiwetel Ejiofor who are both trying to converge on getting to Mark Wahlberg. And then it kind of just devolves from there.
Almost all of the dialogue for some of the characters, including Nora, played by Sophie Cookson, and Garak, played by Liz Carr, are almost all explicitly designated as exposition. We are being told at every moment. It was shot by Mauro Fiore who did Equalizer and Magnificent Seven for Fuqua as well as Avatar.
But there are moments of this that seem a little cheap. Sophie Cookson by far is the most egregiously wasted and what really results to kind of a terrible performance. But then it's Ian Shore's script which it doesn't seem like any of the actors are able to kind of work their way around efficiently.
And then you get these jarring elements of people doing what they usually do, such as Mark Wahlberg showing his usual breathy concern. Jason Mantzoukas shows up as someone named the Artisan who's kind of doing his manic comedy that you would usually find to be the relief needed but ends up being something totally awkward. Same with Liz Carr who plays a character named Garak who, based on the parameters of this scenario, could have resulted in something profound about dying and coming back in bodies that might not work the best for your purposes.
And for a minute I almost think that she's kind of going to occupy that Linda Hunt space of a lot of 80s and 90s films but ultimately fails to do that as well. It's very similar to something like The Old Guard last year but also kind of fails on a certain level of being meant for adults. Notably it's also PG-13.
There's a lot of gun violence but you don't, of course, it plays like a video game. Overall I would give Infinite one out of five stars.