Infinite (2021) - Movie Review

As a general rule, I tend to like the films of Antoine Fuqua. Sure, not every film of his turns out great (The Magnificent Seven was particularly disappointing), and it’s not as if his better films are all grand masterpieces. But more times than not, when I want a solid, reliably entertaining action flick, Fuqua delivers more times than not. But even within that framework, he tends to excel a very particular brand of action cinema, one that relies more on brute force than anything in the way of uber-complicated stunts and martial arts. Which is why this release of his feels so out-of-place.

Rather than going with his dependable low-flash style, this swings in the opposite direction right into overstylised. It’s to the point where the attempts to make the action scenes and the characters involved in them look as cool as possible distract from any of it being perceived as actually cool to witness. Between the incredibly wonky CGI and the generic ‘variety’ of locales and fight scenes, it doesn’t have any real staying power while in the middle of watching it, let alone recalling any of it afterwards. It aims for a Mission: Impossible level of bombast, with a finale where Mark Wahlberg hangs onto the outside of a plane for dear life (kind of, but we’ll get to that), but it just doesn’t stick.

It’s probably got something to do with how backwards the casting is here. To an extent, I get why Fuqua would reconnect with Wahlberg to be the star, but the guy looks so checked out in every scene he’s in. Whether he’s confused by all the other characters talking about his grand destiny, or the sudden surge of determination once he realises that they are right, his constant snarking comes across less like a by-product of his personality and more an attempt to fill up the void where one should be. To say nothing of how he’s supposed to be playing the literal reincarnation of Dylan O’Brien, which reads like the studios wanted name-brand recognition above decisions that make actual thematic sense. I mean, I'll take the lead actor from Love And Monsters over the guy from those annoying LadBroke ads any day.

Now, the story itself is admittedly quite interesting, with its main conceit that not only is reincarnation a real phenomenon, but those who come back regain the memories of all their past lives, skills and knowledge included. Add in the impetus for the villain Bathurst (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who wants the endless cycle of death and rebirth to end, and it has an intriguing foundation… that reveals itself to be on the world’s largest sand pit. For as much as the dialogue and performances attempt to build up the history of the film’s universe, the relationships between the characters across multiple lifetimes, and just the raw potential for rethinking how we perceive life within the story, it all feels so embarrassingly thin. It screams for a touch-up by Derek Kolstad, who could easily have built up the worth of those relationships without even needing to show any flashbacks, or maybe even Greg Rucka, who could make the woes of eternal life into something worth being invested in.

But alas, it’s just a big generic slog that feels like, whenever the writers came across a gap in the film’s continuity, they patched it up with papier-mache made from torn-up strips of a photocopied Matrix script. And likely a bunch of other films, since the hodgepodge presented here is so lacking in cohesion that it barely feels like its own product. Outside of Ejiofor overacting the hell out of his dialogue, there’s barely anything here of note. It goes beyond the disappointment of Magnificent Seven, and goes right into me questioning who, if anyone, attached to this thought this was going to work out in their favour.