Oh, what a grand mess! And what an opportunity missed. Infinite, based on the tenuous concept of reincarnation, had the potential to be another Matrix. Instead, it ends up being the most confounding chaotic take on other-life since the eminently forgettable series ‘After Life’ which I remember now only because an actress of Indian origin Mandeep Dhillon had a major role. After Life at least had a few laughs. Infinite just makes you wish there was no afterlife. If reincarnation means we have bear with such boorish bollocks that tries to aim itself as a serious study of man’s ability to renew his life as many times as he wishes, then I am happy with one life.
Shall we move on? Suffice it to say that the impressive cast of Infinite is plonked into the middle of a muddle that would take several social scientists to resolve. Why is Mark Wahlberg schizophrenic? His inability to make sense of his life has nothing to do with his psychological condition and everything to with the mental faculties of those who wrote the plot of this pandemic pandemonium. The film is all style and no, not no substance. On the contrary, it tries to say too much cramming every cranny with head-splitting action signifying the fact that there is more to life that meets the eye. Sadly, the view on the other side of life is so gauche and anarchic we might as well presume that reincarnation is a tool for inducing terror-related thoughts in children who refuse to come to sleep.
Infinite is a perfect antidote to insomnia. Except that the ear-shattering soundtrack (which sounds like a drove of drones circling the sky aimlessly) won’t let you doze off. The script is on high-alert constantly with the character s quickly moving from one time-zone to another with only their own instincts for company. They certainly don’t get any support from the script which does its drunken-monk act with a fiendish fetish for incoherence.
In the opening car chase (I’ve seen better in Rohit Shetty’s cinema) Dylan O’Brien dies and is born as Mark Wahlberg. Now I don’t know which of the two should feel flattered. Elsewhere, the very gifted black actor Chiwetel Ejiofor was, we are told, a white man in an earlier life. Not that reincarnation has any colour schemes. Just saying how odd the casting pattern is. Or maybe they were just being culturally liberal.
Ejiofor as the villain of the show is the only impressive component in this cornball of a movie where character don’t die. They live forever in a film as far removed from immortality as possible. My only favourite sequence in Infinite has Chiwetel Ejiofor gagging the very talented talented Toby Jones by stuffing his mouth with honey.
Talk about killing with sweetness. Infinite kills you with its complete inability to match its vision with the scale of the film. You know you are watching a spectacular futuristic drama. But where is the glory behind the show of grandeur?
Image source: IMDb