{"id":271142,"date":"2021-06-10T17:01:22","date_gmt":"2021-06-10T14:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/a-blah-sci-fi-action-movie-lacking-in-originality-film\/"},"modified":"2021-06-10T17:01:22","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T14:01:22","slug":"a-blah-sci-fi-action-movie-lacking-in-originality-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/a-blah-sci-fi-action-movie-lacking-in-originality-film\/","title":{"rendered":"#A Blah Sci-Fi Action Movie Lacking in Originality \u2013 \/Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#A Blah Sci-Fi Action Movie Lacking in Originality \u2013 \/Film<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

\"infinite<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are among us a people gifted with a perfect memory of all their past lives. They call themselves Infinites!\u201d So says Mark Wahlberg<\/strong> less than a minute into\u00a0Infinite<\/em>,<\/strong> the hacky and dreadfully blah sci-fi action pic from director\u00a0Antoine Fuqua<\/strong>. Wahlberg doesn\u2019t usually do voice-over narration in his movies<\/a>, and it\u2019s easy to see (or rather, hear) why \u2013 he\u2019s very bad at it.\u00a0Infinite<\/em> thankfully doesn\u2019t have wall-to-wall Wahlberg voice-overs, but when it happ<\/a>ens, you\u2019ll be in awe at how out of his element Wahlberg seems. He sounds as if he\u2019s reading his lines, and reading them for the very first time, too. On top of that, he sounds like he doesn\u2019t understand the words that he\u2019s looking at, as if he were reading a foreign language and trying to pronounce things phonetically.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying ditching the voice-over would save\u00a0Infinite<\/em> \u2013 it\u2019s too far gone for that. But it sure wouldn\u2019t hurt.<\/p>\n

Infinite<\/em>, which was once destined for theaters but is now headed straight to Paramount+, is a slapdash bit of hokum; a Frankenstein\u2019s monster of a movie that\u2019s cobbled together from bits of pieces of pretty much every big action blockbuster from the last 20-something years.\u00a0The Matrix<\/em> is the biggest influence here \u2013 the story unfolds in a manner that follows that film almost beat for beat. But there are also bits and pieces lifted from\u00a0John Wick<\/em>,\u00a0Inception<\/em>, the\u00a0Mission: Impossible<\/em> franchise, and, of course, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.\u00a0Infinite<\/em> isn\u2019t just derivative \u2013 it\u2019s the cinematic equivalent of an unprepared high schooler leaning over and copying test answers from the student sitting at the closest desk.<\/p>\n

Wahlberg is\u00a0Evan McCauley, a guy who was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was 14. This has created some problems for Evan, and when we first meet him, he completely botches a job interview by more or less threatening his potential employer with violence. Things are so dire for Evan that he resorts to buying his schizophrenia medication from seedy drug dealers. This gives Wahlberg a chance to deliver voice-over lines like, \u201cThese meds, they\u2019re running out. And when they do, shit gets real!\u201d Mm, I bet.<\/p>\n

Despite all his problems, Evan is gifted at many things. He can hand-craft a sword using ancient techniques. He knows the\u00a0capital of Burkina Faso off the top of his head. He can make gunpowder from scratch. The weird thing is, he never studied these things \u2013 he just knows them, almost like he\u2019s remembering them. Cue the ominous music.<\/p>\n

Evan runs into a bit of trouble and ends up arrested and deposited into an interrogation room. Enter a mysterious, well-dressed, and vaguely threatening man, played by\u00a0Chiwetel Ejiofor<\/strong>. This mystery man claims he knows Evan, but Evan has no memory of him. At least at first. But he\u2019ll quickly learn that this guy is someone named\u00a0Bathurst. And Bathurst and Evan did know each other \u2013 in many different lives.<\/p>\n

Because as it turns out, Evan isn\u2019t schizophrenic after all. The disturbing visions that landed him that diagnosis are actually memories of past lives. Evan is one of those Infinites he told us about the moment the movie started, and in his most recent life, he was someone named\u00a0Treadway,\u00a0 played by\u00a0Dylan O\u2019Brien<\/strong> in a prologue and a few flashback moments. This turns out to be a major miscalculation. Wahlberg may be the bigger star, but O\u2019Brien has a lot more charisma. And even though he has a fraction of the screen time Wahlberg has, he makes a much better impression. You\u2019ll find yourself wishing he was the star. I bet he\u2019d be better at the voice-overs, too.
\nEvan\/Treadway and his pals, including\u00a0Sophie Cookson<\/strong> playing a token female character who is so poorly defined she might as well not exist, are known as the Believers. They love living multiple lives and strive to learn as much as they can and keep that knowledge going every time they\u2019re reborn. Treadway was\u00a0so<\/em> good at learning new things that he actually found a way to manipulate reality. You know, like Neo, in\u00a0The Matrix<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Bathurst, in contrast, is a member of the Infinite subgroup known as the Nihilists. They\u2019re sick and tired of dying only to be reborn again. Since there\u2019s apparently no way to unsubscribe from the Infinite lifestyle, Bathurst has cooked up a\u00a0MacGuffin device known as the Egg. It\u2019s basically a bomb that will somehow destroy the entire world \u2013 the logic being that if everyone is dead, there\u2019s no way someone can be reborn. Pretty clever, Bathurst. Wait, did I say clever? I meant very, very stupid.\u00a0And in case you didn\u2019t catch that Bathurst is the bad guy, we\u2019re told that he\u2019s found a way to trap the souls of Infinites in a kind of \u201cdigital purgatory,\u201d keeping them from being born again. Why doesn\u2019t he just send himself to digital purgatory instead of trying to destroy existence? Don\u2019t ask! The movie sure doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Infinite<\/em> comes across as if it\u2019s trying to create its own lore and mythology, but everything here feels borrowed or stolen. Marvel doesn\u2019t have the market cornered on world-building \u2013 plenty of other franchises have pulled this off. And they\u2019ve done so by seeming original.\u00a0John Wick<\/em> is a great recent example of this. It\u2019s slick, stylish, and feels fresh, even if it\u2019s not entirely original. And think back to another Keanu Reeves series \u2013\u00a0The Matrix<\/em>. The first\u00a0Matrix<\/em>\u00a0may have borrowed elements from anime<\/a>, but it still felt like something we\u2019d never seen before.\u00a0Infinite<\/em>, on the other hand, is as recycled as the reincarnated characters that populate its frames.<\/p>\n

Fuqua can occasionally deliver the goods, but he\u2019s on autopilot here. Save for an admittedly well-shot car chase scene, the action is lifeless and flat. There\u2019s a moment where Wahlberg jumps a motorcycle onto the wing of a plane, and you get the sense that the film is trying to emulate the dangerous stunts of the\u00a0Mission: Impossible<\/em> franchise. But those stunts are usually real, or at the very least\u00a0look<\/em> real, whereas Wahlberg\u2019s bike jump looks like a video game<\/a> cutscene. The overall appearance of the film is dreary, bordering on bland. Nothing here looks as cool as the folks making the film apparently thought it did.<\/p>\n

The only sign of life comes from\u00a0Jason Mantzoukas<\/strong>, who pops up as a character known as the Artisan. He\u2019s someone who can help people remember their forgotten past lives, or something like that. It\u2019s not very clearly defined, but\u00a0Mantzoukas has a lot of fun with the role regardless. In truth, he appears to be acting in a completely different movie. Perhaps a better one.\u00a0Ejiofor also shows signs of life when he first enters the pic, but eventually, his performance succumbs to fatigue. Perhaps he got bored. I know I did.
\nThere\u2019s nothing wrong with silly, even mindless action movies. There exists a whole slew of \u2019em that are an absolute blast to watch. But they get by on their entertainment value. There\u2019s nothing entertaining about\u00a0Infinite<\/em>. It just sits there, lifeless, hoping to become a full-blown franchise with sequels galore. I doubt that\u2019ll happen at this point, though. Send this one to digital purgatory where it belongs.<\/p>\n

\/Film Rating: 3 out of 10<\/strong><\/p>\n

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“#A Blah Sci-Fi Action Movie Lacking in Originality \u2013 \/Film” \u201cThere are among us a people gifted with a perfect memory of all their past lives. They call themselves Infinites!\u201d So says Mark Wahlberg less than a minute into\u00a0Infinite, the hacky and dreadfully blah sci-fi action pic from director\u00a0Antoine Fuqua. Wahlberg doesn\u2019t usually do voice-over…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":271143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/d13ezvd6yrslxm.cloudfront.net\/wp\/wp-content\/images\/infinite-review.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1568,1513,1570,104781,52455,7598,26257,1499],"class_list":["post-271142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-featured-stories-sidebar","tag-action-adventure","tag-features","tag-infinite","tag-mark-wahlberg","tag-movie-reviews","tag-paramount","tag-sci-fi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}