In a past life, what did Mark Wahlberg do to deserve this?
Why does “The Matrix” work? Many reasons. Keanu Reeves and CarrieAnne Moss at rest or in motion. Laurence Fishburne hypnotizing the exposition like a wizard. The kinetic possibilities of the “bullet time” slow-motion concept. The idea that we’re all pawns stuck inside someone else’s virtual-reality game: paranoia gold. Plus, the sunglasses.
Maybe if “Infinite,” starring a plainly baffled Mark Wahlberg, had figured out the eyewear angle it’d be less of a crumb-bum, dumbwise. Maybe the movie’s story of reincarnated souls, tasked with saving the human race from rival infinites out for total destruction, needed a smoother operator than director Antoine Fuqua, who’s more of a bruteforce man (best known for “Training Day” and “The Equalizer”).
Ian Schorr’s script is the main adversary. It’s adapted from the 2009 D. Eric Maikranz debut novel; Todd Stein gets screen story credit. In the near future, a secret cadre of “Infinites” are divided between “Believers” and “Nihilists,” burdened with “perfect memory of all their past lives,” per the voiceover. A Mexico City prologue set in “the last life” finds one Heinrich Treadway (Dylan O’Brien) in a fast/furious/ridiculous car chase. This Believer has purloined an all-important “egg” that holds the potential for global annihilation, and the Nihilists want it back. Honestly, “The Egg and I” would’ve been a better title.
The prologue turns out to be the latest hallucinatory gotcha haunting the
Wahlberg character, Evan Michaels, whose self-described struggles with mental illness require a lot of medication. Oddly, Evan has mad blacksmith and sword-making skills he cannot explain, though Toby Jones (good ol’ Toby Jones, always good, even in bad movies) explains them for us.
In one of many past incarnations, Evan was a whiz-kid Japanese samurai. In the movie’s present day, in New York City, he meets the movie’s nihilist antagonist (Chiwetel Ejiofor, waging a valiant war with his own gassy speeches) who wants that egg bad. He taunts Evan with little comments about how they met during the Second Punic War, though the interrogation ends before Ejiofor’s character has a chance to sing the Rodgers and Hart classic “Where or When.” That beauty took care of the same dejá vu notion in three minutes, as opposed to the running time of “Infinite,” which (checks notes) is 106 minutes, but works on Buzz Lightyear time: to infinity and beyond!
So, no musical interlude. But Sophie Cookson of the “Kingsman” movies suddenly smashes her sleek getaway car right through the police station wall, and while I’d love to report “Infinite” takes off from there, it keeps stalling out even when it switches transportation modes. Whisked by plane to the Believers’ Shangri-Lastyle training compound, Evan remains mute, surly and confused throughout much of the picture, and Wahlberg no doubt drew on his personal experience making the movie for the purposes of starring in the movie. Over and over, he’s stuck responding to reams of reincarnation theory or egg-related matter with “That’s crazy” or “I don’t even know what that means!”
Is the look on Wahlberg’s face the character thinking
Or is it the actor thinking
MPAA rating: PG-13 (sequences of strong violence, bloody images, strong language and brief drug use)
Running time: 1:46
Where to watch: Streaming now on Paramount Plus.