There are those who believe in reincarnation, the idea that, when people die, they return eventually in another life. If, somehow, those who had lived before were able to recall what they had been through, they might be able to take lessons from it and create a better world. Yet it’s just as likely that, given the opportunity to dwell on centuries or millennia of knowledge about how society functions, many would attempt to exploit or destroy it for their own aims. That’s the setup of Infinite, a film with a bold concept that relies very little on logic to play out its all-too-familiar story.
To explain the premise of this film shouldn’t be all that difficult, but I’m not sure I can offer a coherent breakdown of how it’s all supposed to work. Basically, people called Infinites are able to recall their past lives, but they have to be reminded of everything they’ve experienced before...
Mark Wahlberg plays Evan McCauley, one such man who always thought that his troubles were due to a mental condition. He's brought in when other Infinites believe him to be a key leader who represents their only hope to stop a rival (Chiwetel Ejiofor) hellbent on ending all life as the only solution to the misery of immortality.
Think about it this way – if you had to take down a villain with nothing to lose, you’d want Mark Wahlberg on your team. Naturally, a good chunk of this film’s exposition is wasted on his character expressing disbelief that any of this could be true, and it’s not actually his physical body that his allies need, rather what’s in his head from a past life. If this sounds a bit like the recent movie version of Mortal Kombat, that’s because it’s not all that dissimilar, though this film wants to spend more time on plot when it should instead invest in action.
Infinite subscribes to the laws of physics explored in films like Wanted and the Fast and the Furious franchise, which makes for exciting car chase scenes that aren’t meant to be taken literally since they couldn’t possibly happen. Driving backwards has clearly become popular as a result of Tenet, and there’s plenty of it to be found here, even if it doesn’t seem as necessary. I think a mindless action movie would have been well-suited for this material, but director Antoine Fuqua is trying instead to make something more like Training Day, which this film definitely isn’t. For being about remembered past lives, the memory of this film will be disappointingly fleeting. C+
Infinite premieres today exclusively on Paramount+.