Infinite Review: The Mark Wahlberg Starrer Is A Crashing Confounding Bore

Here’s our review of the 2021 film Infinite. It is directed by Antoine Faqua and stars Mark Wahlberg, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Cookson, Jason Mantzoukas, Rupert Friend, Toby Jones, and Dylan O'Brien

7113 Reads |  

Infinite Review: The Mark Wahlberg Starrer Is A Crashing Confounding Bore


Oh, what a grand mess! And what an opportunity missed. Infinite, based on the tenuous concept of reincarnation, had the potential to be another Matrix. Instead, it ends up being the most confounding chaotic take on other-life since  the eminently forgettable series ‘After Life’ which I remember now only because an actress of Indian origin Mandeep Dhillon had a major role. After Life at least had a few laughs. Infinite just makes you wish there was no afterlife. If reincarnation means  we  have  bear with such  boorish  bollocks that  tries to aim itself as  a serious study  of man’s ability to renew his life  as many times as  he wishes, then I am happy with one  life.

Shall we move on?  Suffice it to say that the impressive cast of Infinite is plonked into the middle of  a muddle  that would take  several social  scientists  to  resolve. Why is Mark Wahlberg schizophrenic? His inability to make sense of his life has nothing to do with his psychological  condition and everything to with the mental faculties of those who wrote the plot of this  pandemic pandemonium. The film  is all style and no, not no substance. On the contrary, it tries  to say too much cramming every cranny with  head-splitting action signifying  the fact that there is more to life that meets the eye. Sadly, the  view on the other side  of life is  so  gauche  and anarchic we might as well presume  that  reincarnation is a  tool  for  inducing terror-related thoughts  in children who  refuse  to come  to sleep.

Infinite is a perfect antidote to insomnia. Except that the ear-shattering soundtrack (which sounds like a drove of drones circling the sky aimlessly) won’t let you doze off. The script is on high-alert constantly with the character s quickly moving from one time-zone  to another with only their own instincts  for company. They certainly don’t get any support from the script which does its drunken-monk act with a fiendish fetish for incoherence.

In the opening car chase (I’ve seen better in Rohit Shetty’s cinema) Dylan O’Brien dies and  is born as Mark Wahlberg. Now I don’t know which  of  the two should feel flattered. Elsewhere, the very gifted black actor Chiwetel Ejiofor was, we are told, a white man in an earlier life. Not that reincarnation has any colour schemes. Just saying how odd the casting pattern  is. Or maybe they were  just being culturally  liberal.

Ejiofor as the villain of the show is the only impressive component in this cornball of a movie where character don’t die. They live forever in a film as far removed from immortality as possible. My only favourite sequence in Infinite has Chiwetel Ejiofor gagging the very talented talented Toby Jones by stuffing his mouth with honey.

Talk about killing with sweetness. Infinite kills you with its complete inability to match its vision with the scale of the film. You know you are watching a spectacular futuristic drama. But where is the glory behind the show of grandeur?



Image source: IMDb