Director Antoine Fuqua has found steady work over the years, but honestly, I can’t say I am much of a fan. Yes, he did direct Training Day, the movie that got Denzel Washington an Oscar, but honestly, without Washington’s riveting performance, would have been a rather average movie. Fuqua has worked quite a bit with Washington since then, but again, I can’t say I was all that impressed by many of them.
Fuqua’s latest, Infinite, doesn’t even have Denzel Washington, and Mark Wahlberg may be many things, but he sure isn’t on par with Denzel Washington…though to be fair to Wahlberg, few actors are.
The movie opens with Wahlberg’s Evan McCauley explaining through a voiceover that there are people who constantly reincarnate with full memories and skills of all of their past lives. There are two factions. The Believers are good and want to guide humanity to a better world. The Nihilists want to end life because they’re tired of reincarnation or something. After a scene set in 1970s Mexico City showing the end of McCauley’s previous life along with two allies against a determined foe, we cut to the present where McCauley is again narrating the action as a voiceover, but he doesn’t seem to know any of the stuff he personally narrated in the opening seconds of the movie. So, does he know or not?
As it turns out, he doesn’t, but he does have strange dreams, skills, and knowledge. He keeps himself medicated on the assumption that he’s a schizophrenic. You know, the sort of schizophrenic who knows how to forge a samurai sword while still being an unemployed chef. After he’s brought into a police station, he’s confronted by Bathurst (Chiwetel Ejiofor), someone who seems to know a lot about this whole past lives thing. McCauley doesn’t seem to remember much, but he’s rescued by Nora (Sophie Cookson), taking him back to Believer Headquarters. See, the Nihilists have a weapon that can destroy all life on Earth, and they are currently winning the war because they also have guns that shoot special bullets that steal sons and temporarily prevent reincarnation. With only a handful of Believers left, McCauley better remember where he stashed a doomsday weapon
So, there’s this concept called Fridge Logic. The basic idea is there are certain things you don’t realize while consuming some form of entertainment don’t quite make sense until later when you, say, get up and go to the fridge for a snack when the movie or whatever is done. I can safely say that at no point during the movie did Infinite ever give me a case of Fridge Logic for a very simple reason: I noticed right away when the movie wasn’t making a whole lot of sense, starting with my comments above about why Wahlberg’s narration suggested he knew things that he really didn’t. Why not use a different character to explain the Believer/Nihilist thing? Or, since Nora explains it again later, why not skip explaining it at all and let the (plot dump heavy) second act do all that stuff? Why did the Nihilists need some kind of sci-fi superweapon to wipe out all living things on Earth? Why not just use good ol’ fashioned nuclear weapons? If Bathurst was tired of being reborn, why not just use one of those soul-trapping bullets on himself? And if the superweapon would wipe out all life everywhere, why not just activate it right away? Sure, these are questions where the basic answer is that it fits the needs that the story itself requires. If, for example, the superweapon were turned on immediately, they we couldn’t get a big third act action sequence of Wahlberg going to get it back.
And that’s basically what this movie is: incredibly silly at best, poorly thought out in many ways, with a lead actor who usually works better when he has a supporting role or at least a strong second actor to work off, and he certainly lacks one here. Something like Infinite is basically aiming to be some kind of mindless popcorn flick, the kind where you turn your brain off and just enjoy. But I can’t even do that here because it just raised too many silly questions that couldn’t really be answered. I don’t know that I’d call the movie bad so much as it is really, really dumb.
Grade: C-
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