Infinite (2021)

(Amazon Streaming, December 2022) After taking in Infinite, the first question that comes to mind is something like: What fresh nonsense was this? It’s as if everyone involved in its production stopped caring about things like verisimilitude, logic, consistency or even the need to entertain. The overly convoluted backstory to this fantasy tale has people being reincarnated into new bodies after death, effectively making them immortal. But then it gets worse, or at least more incoherent—because, being unsatisfied with serial immortality, the script then goes on to add two duelling societies (okay…), of which one wants to destroy the entire world (why?), with Mark Walhberg playing a character twenty years his junior (um…) who develops superpowers because reasons (wait, what?)  By the time Infinite ends, we’re served with an action sequence in which people are running on top of a forever-crashing plane, jumping off in the air and fighting each other without parachutes. I mean—at some point, where does this nonsense end? I’m as big a fan of dumb action movies and fantasy spectacle as anyone else, but Infinite is nothing short of contemptuous in the way it treats its audience as ready to accept anything. That’s not fatal by itself, but it’s loathsome when it’s combined with a script that just tosses off new things every ten minutes without bothering to check if it’s consistent with everything else at that point. The film seems structured around a few action sequences that have potential (considering that they were stolen from other better movies) but end up being botched at the execution stage, with minimal bits of a plot to get from one sequence to another but never coherently from beginning to end. It’s apparently based on a self-published book, although it’s not said to be a faithful adaptation. What’s more dispiriting is that this wasn’t meant to be a low-budget straight-to-streaming piece of tossed-off garbage (although it became exactly that): it’s a studio film with well-known director Antoine Fuqua at the helm, with a large budget (yet cut-rate special effect) and known names in the cast such as Chiwetel Ejiofor, Toby Jones and Jason Mantzoukas in a rare clunky performance. Unlike other action spectacles that play fine in the moment but make less and less sense the more you think about it, Infinite is inane as it plays, and becomes even worse if you try to piece it back together. I constantly note that the “worst movies of the year” are seldom studio productions but more often found in low-budget bottom-of-the-barrel streaming sites… but Infinite is a special case of its own. Some of the action shots are mildly fun taken in isolation, but don’t try to see how they fit in context, because nothing really makes sense here and the film doesn’t have the moment-by-moment charm or panache to compensate for any of its glaring shortcomings.