Infinite – Film Review

For Evan McCauley (Mark Wahlberg), skills he has never learned and memories of places he has never visited haunt his daily life. Self-medicated and on the brink of a mental breakdown, Evan is sought by a secret group that calls themselves “Infinites,” revealing to him that his memories may be real–but they are from multiple past lives. The Infinites bring Evan into their extraordinary world, where a gifted few are given the ability to be reborn with their memories and knowledge accumulated over centuries.

With critical secrets buried in his past, Evan must work with the Infinites to unlock the answers in his memories in a race against time to save humanity from one of their own (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who seeks to end all life to stop what he views as the cursed, endless cycle of reincarnation.

Do you guys remember back in the day when no matter what movie Mark Wahlberg starred in it would easily make hundreds of millions of dollars? For some reason that I still don’t understand, mainstream audiences really seemed to absolutely adore those Ted films and who was the star of that? Well, I mean you could argue that it’s Seth McFarlane and you wouldn’t be wrong. But the human star there is Wahlberg.

And for some reason, starting with Age of Extinction, the Transformers film series directed by Michael Bay seemed to ditch Shia LaBeouf‘s story arc and go with a brand new lead in Wahlberg. The aforementioned Ted and its sequel Ted 2 managed to rake in close to $800 million at the box office combined and both Transformers films he starred in – Age of Extinction and The Last Knight – raked in a whopping $1.7 billion at the box office.

I guess there is just something marketable about Wahlberg. I’m not sure it’s his acting skills because in my personal opinion he isn’t all that great, so maybe it’s his physical appearance? I’m honestly just shooting in the dark. But the days where any Wahlberg movie would be a commercial hit are long gone it seems, and his newest feature Infinite further solidifies that.

This movie aims to be a grand-scale epic with a huge expansive world and while I can admire some aspects of it, it ultimately fails at nearly everything. Not only is it majorly boring to have to sit through, but it can be downright terrible in other aspects. Wahlberg’s character Evan McCauley has schizophrenic episodes but rather than actually delving deep on this and tackling important mental health themes, the movie instead tries to make it seem cool almost, which is just disgusting.

Speaking of McCauley, he is easily one of the most boring characters in a large-scale science fiction movie I have seen in years. He just comes across as an ordinary guy that for whatever reason is front and center in this story. Why? The question never really gets any answers. The entire time I was just wishing that the movie could have starred a better and more interesting character. The development here is practically non-existent for every character across the board too.

To be honest with you though, the opening sequence was hugely entertaining and I was hoping that the entire film would be like that but sadly, it wasn’t. It kind of felt like the Fast and Furious movies on steroids and if they were set in the future. I love the way that sounds and so I was hoping the movie would go all out and be an insane, unforgiving action thrill-ride but instead, it suffers from unbearable amounts of exposition that almost made me doze off sometimes.

There was one point in the film where I got so bored and so I decided to check how far I was into the movie. It turned out I only had thirty-five minutes left and when I realized that it genuinely shocked me. Not because the movie went by so quickly because I was having so much fun because I wasn’t. It shocked me because up to that point, literally, nothing of excitement happened except for the fun stunts in the opening scene.

I guess I should have known this film was going to be bad when I found out that it was directed by Antoine Fuqua who is essentially known for making movies with a grand scale that end up being massively disappointing. I suppose I was just wishing for the best, but sadly, I watched a film by Fuqua. So in other words, it was bad.

Even the most massive science-fiction fans are going to find little to appreciate here. The exposition is so heavy that it almost feels like a parody at times. Why is there so much talking in this movie instead of visual storytelling? And equally important – why would you make a sci-fi movie where almost nothing happens? It baffles me.

Some of the visual effects were kind of impressive to look at and the cinematography by Mauro Fiore certainly isn’t bad, but these two elements sadly are not enough to make Infinite any good. Even Wahlberg himself looks like he didn’t want to be involved with this movie. Maybe he just needed the extra paycheck so he decided “Eh, why not?”. If that’s not what happened then I have no clue why so many talented people would sign onto this film because it is one of the worst of the year so far.