‘INFINITE’ is a sci-fi action flick directed by Antoine Fuqua, best known for the 2001 crime thriller “Training Day” for which Denzel Washington got an Oscar best actor award that actually should have gone to Russell Crowe for “A Beautiful Mind” if he didn’t antagonize the academy voters.
Based on the novel “The Reincarnation Papers”, it aims to build its own fantasy universe premised on the idea of reincarnation, so they try to explain to the viewer all the rules that govern their high-concept origin storyline at the start of the film with a narrator.
It starts in 1985 in Mexico City, Heinrich Treadway (Dylan O’Brien) stole a mysterious entity called “The Egg” from a man known as Bathurst (Rupert Friend), who is chasing him as The Egg is his own invention meant to demolish mankind.
Bathurst gets to kill Treadway’s friends Abel and Leona, and we see Treadway in his car that jumps off a bridge, but we don’t know what happens to him.
Cut to the present, Evan McCauley (Mark Wahlberg) applies for a job but he’s rejected because he’s suffering from schizophrenia and violent behavior.
He is not a blacksmith but when a gangster asks him to make a Japanese sword, he is able to forge a blade of superior craftsmanship.
When the gangster refuses to pay him with the illegal meds they’ve agreed upon, he kills him and his henchmen, but he gets arrested and Bathurst (now played by Chiwetel Eijofor) turns up to get him.
Bathurst claims that he is the reincarnation of Treadwell and that they’ve actually known each other in past several lifetimes.
Bathurst's goal is to ask him where he hid The Egg but a girl, Nora Brightman (Sarah Cookson, “Kingsman”) appears and rescues Evan from Bathurst.
Nora explains to Evan that he belongs to a group of persons known as the Infinites, who always get reincarnated and remember all their past lives.
This reminds us of Charlize Theron and her friends who also get reincarnated in Netflix’ “The Old Guard”.
There are two rival groups among the Infinites. First is the Believers, the good guys who think that being reincarnated is a gift given to them to help the world.
The other group is the Nihilists, the bad guys who believe that it’s not a gift but a curse. so their goal is to kill all people on earth with The Egg, a doomsday weapon that acts like a bomb aimed to end all human life.
Bathurst wants to get Evan to find out where he hid The Egg in his past life as Treadway.
Nora is Leona’s reincarnation and she tells Evan that he is perceived as a schizophrenic because he confuses the past memories that haunt him from his multiple past lives with events in the present one.
Through a machine, his memory is fully unlocked. He recalls that as Treadway, he cut open his own self to hide The Egg inside his abdomen.
Bathurst sees Evan revealing this and the deadly fight for The Egg begins in a series of spectacular and inventive action sequences.
In one big scene, The Egg flies out of a plane.
Both Evan and Bathurst are shown jumping off the plane to pursue it, with them ending up fighting ferociously while in mid-air.
If you don’t take the film too seriously, you might enjoy it’s fast paced action scenes, lots of high tech gadgetry and a sleek clandestine hideout called The Hub and with a genius craftsman called the Artisan who helps Evan and the believers in so many ways.
Mark Wahlberg fits the role of the perplexed action hero perfectly and there’s an incredible action scene where he is shown on a motorcycle running after a plane.
He makes the motorcycle jump off a cliff and he lands onto the wing of the airplane to apprehend the escaping Bathhurst.
The big-budgetted globe-trotting locations showing Mexico City, London, Nepal, Cardiff, etc. are all lushly photographed and will please moviegoers who want to do some armchair travelling in this season of the pandemic.
