Gosh, I wonder why this film didn’t come out in theaters. Oh, I see it now. And if you don’t get it initially, this is a shoot-em-up sci-fi drama where Jason Mantzoukas shows up halfway through. Let me put it this way: if you have a film that’s not a comedy and Jason Mantzoukas shows up, you’re doing something wrong. And when you make him an immortal brain doctor, you’re doing something really, really wrong.
There are two types of immortals in this film: dudes who are OK with being immortal and dudes who are so sick of being immortal, they just want to destroy all life including their own. As for the latter, geez, fellas, get a hobby. I mean, are you so much of a dick that you don’t want anybody else to enjoy anything ever again, either? I mean, that’s approaching MAGA-level dickishness. Welcome to “I’m going to take my world and go home” territory.
Oh, and the immortal people have superpowers, sorta. This is hinted at in the beginning of the film, almost explored, forgotten for 90 minutes, then hinted again, and almost explored again. I’m not sure there’s anything more stupid in a story than giving somebody super powers and essentially ignoring them for the rest of the film. Why do that?
The genuinely special thing about these guys is immortality. Oh, they die all right, but they reincarnate memories intact, well, all except for Evan McCauley (Mark Walhberg) who experienced a head injury in his current iteration and can’t remember stuff so good … but he does know how to forge a perfect samurai sword, which is kind of an odd trait for a Wahlberg to have. Turns out, McCauley used to be a douchebag named Treadway who died in the 1980s. Everybody acknowledges Treadway was a douchebag, but Treadway captured the secret world-destroying egg and hid it in a place you’ll never, ever guess … unless you see movies. Now, nobody knows where the egg is except Evan McCauley, who doesn’t really know either.
So basically there’s a violent tug-of-war over getting control of McCauley and getting him to remember Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. And he has superpowers he never uses. Am I understanding this correctly? Oh, and this idiocy is all before Mantzoukas shows up. This is the kind of film where people just shoot at each other – not sure why, we’re just gonna act violent. Woo.
Infinite is a bad film. I won’t call historic bad or bottom ten bad. But it is a bad film. Part of it is a stupid screenplay — a clan of immortals divided into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, I’m sorry, that’s Believers and Nihilists, and part of it is asking a sci-fi film to revolve around Mark Wahlberg, which is a pretty dicey proposition given The Happening and Max Payne.
I’m not sure
when Mark Wahlberg transitioned from the classic underdog to the heavy, but I don’t think it’s working for him. Wahlberg is the kind of guy you want to underestimate and then be surprised. We know he sings; we know he dances; we know he looks better than you do without a shirt on. But he’s better when we have to guess it because even if he were playing JFK, he would still come off as Joe Boston long before Jack Kennedy settled in.
Bottom line is even Paramount knew this film was a dog – the biggest films of the 2021 summer are Space Jam 2, F9, and Black Widow, all ho hum at best, and the studio decided to release exclusively to Paramount+ and lost it among “Clarice” and “The Equalizer.” I did not hate Infinite. I’ll repeat: I did not actually hate this film. But I sure didn’t like it, either, and I have no respect for it.
Marky Mark has reincarnation strife
Running through him like the blade of a knife
Not his finest hour
Leaving me all a-glower
Maybe I’ll enjoy it in my next life
Rated PG-13, 106 Minutes
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Writer: Ian Shorr, Todd Stein
Genre: Our screwed future? Our screwed present?
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Immortals?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who need reasons
