WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Infinite, now streaming on Paramount+.
In Paramount+’s Infinite, the film plays with the concept of time quite loosely as it details the feud between the Believers and terrorists called Nihilists. The former want to protect the planet, thanks to leader Treadway (Dylan O’Brien), while the latter wants to end all life courtesy of Bathurst (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to stop their cycles of reincarnation. However, as both collide, the war at hand produces a high-tech future that’s one of Hollywood’s worst.
Firstly, Treadway’s in 1985 in Mexico with a racing car a la Fast & Furious as he tries to escape with Bathurst’s bomb, the Egg. When the villain gets to Treadway’s crew, though, he’s using a high-tech gun that implies science in this universe is way advanced.
The Believers are killed in that war, which then jumps the movie to 2020. This is where it gets weird, because Mark Wahlberg is the new body for Treadway’s soul — mind you, he looks way older than 35. It’s implied that the ’80s Bathurst (played by Rupert Friend) also died in the battle, which would mean Ejiofor’s Bathurst is also 35, despite looking older as well. That sets the stage for a world that simply can’t tell what it wants to be.
Initially, when Treadway’s rescued by the new Nora, she’s in a racing car as well that acts like a Transformer. The steering wheel goes into the dashboard and transfers to the passenger’s seat for Treadway to steer, so as they escape Bathurst’s tank, you’re expecting an epic chase. That doesn’t happen, as the vehicles don’t do much after that. It does seem like amazing weapons will be seen, though, as Nora’s deploying bombs in the vein of The Winter Soldier that stick to vehicles and blow them up. However, she doesn’t have anything else mind-blowing.
When she takes Treadway to their lair, the weapons are pretty basic — swords, guns and grenades. What’s odd at the Hub here is that we do see a chamber that the Believers have created, like an A.I., which they use to study space and time — but this paints a discrepancy. They say they’re advanced due to centuries of knowledge but it’s all so inconsistent as you don’t get anything with a wow factor per a film like Minority Report.
At Bathurst’s Scottish castle, it’s very average as his dethroner gun, which stores souls in transparent bullets, places these essences into hard drives, while he uses drones to attack intruders. As for his cavalry, it’s basic SWAT guys with Jeeps — a contrast to him using his H.U.D. and holograms a la Tony Stark. It’s as if parts of both factions are evolved, but the others aren’t. One would have expected Bathurst to have high-tech guards akin to another Paramount property in G.I. Joe, or even robots as minions with all his centuries of knowledge.
What further leaves you wondering if the film was just lazy creatively or ran out of budget is the chamber the Artisan uses to reboot Treadway’s mind. It’s just a tank they drown him in, as opposed to a machine from The Matrix. And all it does is get his mind to panic so he hopefully remembers where he stole and hid the Egg. It’s a tremendous disappointment, and when you do see the Egg — a rip-off of the bomb Bane used in The Dark Knight Rises — it feels so underwhelming.
Even its effects mimic the dusting sequence from Thanos’ Snap with no originality. Bathurst stores it on an army jet in a lackluster finale with Treadway coming after him in a Highlander-lite fashion with a sword alone. All these misses give the impression that this film is a knock-off Mission: Impossible and not a technological marvel like the Believers said they were living in.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua, Infinite stars Mark Wahlberg, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Cookson, Rupert Friend, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Jason Mantzoukas, Toby Jones, Dylan O’Brien and Liz Carr. It’s now available to stream on Paramount+.
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