Infinite

Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Magnificent Seven, The Equalizer), where are you? 

Surely, Infinite is NOT the movie you wanted to make. Full of way too much stand still explanation that results in a quasi-nauseous feeling of déjà vu, Infinite - now streaming on Paramount Plus - is an utter disappointment as it fails to do anything except make you yawn while checking your watch. 

"an endless loop of reincarnated souls and collateral damage that we have all seen before.  The BIG BOYS can do better than this."


Starring Mark Wahlberg as Evan McCauley, a man suffering from a number of things - including schizophrenia - as a result of being one of the few special “Infinites” out in the world. What's an Infinite you ask?  Just wait. 

As the movie begins, Evan doesn’t remember his past life but he has the strange ability to be able to make a sword.  Something is up here.  Of course, we remember who Evan was thanks to a super-charged and thrilling car chase which opens the movie, promising more of that carnage to follow.

Honestly, the best the movie gets is RIGHT HERE in the opening 10 or 15 minutes as Wahlberg struggles to find employment.  In a narration that sometimes works (but mostly doesn’t), we find him the most human.  It is here, in the best scene of the movie, as he’s interviewing for a job he won’t get with a creepy restaurant owner where we really connect with this damaged soul. The scene is highly charged (unlike the finale) and helps us relate to Evan as he struggles to pay rent and buy his prescribed medicine. 

Too bad it doesn't last . . . because all too soon he learns that he's a superhero.  Infinite

Evan is an infinite - a special person who is born and reborn with the ability to remember everything they have ever learned - and, along with this life loop, comes a rather unique ability to twist and bend through the atmosphere to your own will.  Or something like that.  

It doesn’t really matter because, honestly, this movie and the actors involved - outside of Wahlberg (who still struggles to match words with the correct emotion) and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the man baddie, Bathurst - completely fail to connect with audiences.  I'm not saying these two actors are great in their roles either, so imagine just how poorly acted this film is.

With that as a struggle, keep in mind that this is a movie with A LOT of exposition that can’t get us to buy in to its unremarkable spin on Wanted and the like. We listen and listen as the actor's spit out lines without care.  This is a HUGE problem.  The characters - Sophie Cookson as Nora and Jason Mantzoukas as the tech guru (who tries but fails to make us laugh) - are paper-thin and so is the plot as Wahlberg is whisked away to a magical place to help him remember what he did with an “egg” that the baddies want to get their fingers on since they are tired of their ongoing lives as The Nihilists and want to bring it all to an end.

If it gets us out of this movie any quicker, I say hand the damn egg over, but screenwriters Ian Shorr and Todd Stein disagree, making us sit through a nearly 2-hour CGI crap-fest that ends in an aerial sky slugfest ripped straight from the beginning of Moonraker, except not as exciting BECAUSE IT ISN'T REAL.  Boring, overlong, and filled with a CGI Wahlberg jumping and landing a motorcycle on the wings of an airplane, Infinite so badly wants to be a brand new thing with its own series of movies that it misses the importance of getting the first film in a franchise successfully off the ground. 

Infinite is an endless loop of reincarnated souls and collateral damage that we have all seen before.  The BIG BOYS can do better than this.  Or has Hollywood learned nothing during the covid-19 shutdown?

1/5 stars

 

Film Details

Infinite

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, some bloody images, strong language and brief drug use.
Runtime:
106 mins
Director
: Antoine Fuqua
Writer:
Ian Shorr
Cast:
Mark Wahlberg, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Cookson
Genre
: Sci-fi | Thriller
Tagline:

Memorable Movie Quote: "What do I know that you need so bad?"
Theatrical Distributor:
Paramount Pictures
Official Site: https://www.thehustle.movie/
Release Date:
June 30, 2021 (streaming)
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:

Synopsis: A man discovers that his hallucinations are actually visions from past lives.

Art

Infinite

 

Infinite

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