I don’t know what happened to this movie. It feels like something went wrong along the way, and they tried their best to fix it but ended up making things worse.
I’d even bet money that this was meant to be a pretty hard R, but was cut down to a more crowd pleasing PG-13. But the cut violence is the least of this film’s problems.
With a pretty competent director behind this, with previous works such as Training Day, Shooter, Equalizer… the man knows action movies with a plot.
So what the fuck happened here?
I don’t even think I can blame the writers for this one as they too have competent previous works as well including Splinter and Office Uprising, two fun horror movies both worth checking out.
I wonder how many people reading this right now have even heard of this movie. It’s a pretty big budgeted film, starring Mark Wahlberg, so obviously someone must know what movie it is I’m reviewing. Right?
If it helps any, this is the… I could be wrong but I think the first big budget release by Paramount plus, formally known as CBS All Access.
So what did I think of Infinite?
Well, you ever see The Matrix? What about Wanted? That’s basically Infinite, but the generic version that didn’t really make sense on the first watch. My hope is I’ll put the pieces together along with you guys, as I write this review. Sounds fun!
The plot in a nutshell, a group of immortals… scratch that, they aren’t exactly immortal, as they do and can die, they just get reincarnated with the same memories.
After a few thousand years of this, it makes them very skilled at a variety of things such as fighting, advance technology, sword crafting… you name it.
That’s easy enough to explain, I haven’t gotten to the actual plot yet, so stick with me while I try my best at that piecing together part I mentioned.
We start off with the police chasing after a red sports car, the man inside is wounded in the gut, having just recently stolen a briefcase carrying something we aren’t privy to yet.
He is in communication with a second car with a man and a woman, both seeming like a romantic couple. This somehow is relevant to the story, which is why I’m bringing it up.
They end up crashing, getting sideswiped by another pursuer, who does end up killing them, blowing up the car they are in.
The other man in the red sports car also crashes his car but flings himself out onto a nearby construction crane.
We never see the other person after them. Which automatically made me think this person is actually Mark Wahlberg’s character reincarnated.
See, my theory was, Mark is actually this bad guy who has lost his memory and only he knows of the whereabouts of this Mcguffin everyone is fighting for control over.
Everyone thinks he’s the red sports car guy, but really he’s the bad guy. Well, forget that idea because that isn’t the case. No twist to be had actually. There’s only one twist, and it’s pretty dumb.
The faceless bad guy is no one. Like just some random dude working for the bad immortals. Unless maybe I missed something and he was our main villain, just reincarnated as someone else? I mean, that would make the most sense, but they never address this in the movie nor do we ever see him die, so I have no idea.
Now back to the people that died in the car.
So the bad guys have these bullets that upload your brain onto a computer chip, stopping them from reincarnating. My question however is, if this is say… the 1980’s, even as advanced as they seem to be, would they still have these bullet computer chips? Have you seen what a 1980’s computer chip looks like?
Have you seen what a 1980’s computer looks like?
Unless this is present day and everything we see after this scene is 40 years in the future…
Anyway, I guess the man in the car got shot in the head with said chip bullet before the car exploded, killing them both.
And now I guess it’s like 40 years later. None of this is specified, so I’m just working off speculation at this point.
Let’s talk about The Matrix real quick. People forget that the plot to The Matrix is The One dies and is reincarnated inside The Matrix as Neo.
That is the exact same plot to Infinite.
In The Matrix, the Mcguffin was Neo himself, while Infinite Mark Wahlberg’s character Evan is the only one who knows of the whereabouts of the Mcguffin.
The Mcguffin being this egg that when activated will kill all life on Earth, so the bad guys can stop reincarnating and finally die.
Can’t reincarnate if there isn’t anything alive to come back as. Also, this is 1980’s tech? What? I found this really dumb. But honestly, I find most plot scenarios where the whole world is at risk kind of dumb. But this tiny egg being this virus carrier is just laughable to me.
Evan thinks he is schizophrenia, but jobless, he resorts to crafting katana swords to buy drugs for crazy drug dealers as payment.
That’s when he gets in trouble, getting arrested and meeting our main villain Bathurst.
Okay, so as I’m looking up their names, I do see that the character fighting the sports car guy, killing the others was meant to be Bathurst.
I guess somewhere along the way he died. Mystery solved. See, we’re figuring this out together!
Bathurst tests Evan, making him remember who he is, but Evan has a metal plate in his head, so remembering makes things difficult.
Evan is then rescued by Nora in this over the top rescue with a car ramming through the building and into the interrogation room. Which reminded me a bit of a scene from Legion.
Wait… is it Nora or Mora? IMDB is giving me Mora, while the film’s wiki is saying Nora. Oh great, another mystery to solve.
I’ll just call her Nora.
Anyway, Nora is the reincarnated woman from the car that exploded with her lover in it.
She talks nonstop about how in love they are, this person we never see again, but at the same time it’s kind of setting up a romance between her and Evan.
Which was also confusing as I wasn’t sure if Evan was meant to be the guy who died in the car or sword guy. I was pretty sure sword guy since swords seem to be his thing.
But the way she kept swooning over him, I honestly wasn’t sure. From what I hear, in the script the big reveal I believe is he is actually her love, not sword guy… I think.
I’d believe it, since it seems to be setting that up, but I guess was changed.
Mostly the plot is just them trying to jolt Evan’s memories so he can tell them where sword guy stashed the world destroying kill all life on Earth egg.
Evan has to see this guy with a tank that just drowns you, not sure how this gets his memories back. I’m sure they explained it, I just didn’t care at this point.
But Evan dies, Bathurst and his men show up…
Oh there’s also this lady that hangs around Bathurst. I have no idea who she is or even if she has any lines. I’m really not sure what her role in this movie is, other than giving someone for Nora to fight.
Bathurst takes control of the good immortal’s headquarters where they learn the egg was inside Evan’s previous corpse. He was wounded because he cut himself open and stashed it inside himself. Which is why Evan carved LOOK INSIDE on his chest.
See, dumb plot twist, if you can even call that a twist.
Evan does eventually come back to life with his memories intact. Now the team has to assault Bathurst’s compound to retrieve the egg.
While there, they find the wall of computer chips that have everyone’s memories on it. So they blow it up with Nora inside. She dead now. Next!
Evan fights Bathurst to stop the egg from going off, also dying in the process, but I guess not before shooting Bathurst in the head with his own bullet chip gun.
Now I guess it’s like 15 or so years later and everyone is reincarnated… Whatever, I don’t care and I’m guessing neither do you.
So let’s rate this thing.
SKIP.
Yeah, no way can I recommend even just renting it, as you’d have to have Paramount plus.
And I can’t think of any reason to subscribe to that streaming service unless you’re super into the shitty Star Trek shows they have there.
Skip this one, see Wanted if you haven’t. It’s a much better film. They even kind of use the same weapons. Or hell, check out The Matrix again, that movie never gets old. Just don’t waste your time on this carbon copy.
