Paramount is one of the latest studios to dip into the streaming waters, and as vivid as that might sound, it’s not literally. They’ve simply followed the likes of Amazon, Disney, and NBC, who have followed the likes of Netflix and HBO into the world of streaming. And like the streaming platforms, especially in this decade, they’ve followed the path of ‘it’s not enough to simply helm content, you also have to create yours’.
So, in June, they gave us Infinite, its first original movie to go on Paramount+. The script of Infinite – a movie based on the book The Reincarnation Papers by D. Eric Maikranz – was defined as ‘The Matrix meets Wanted’. In many ways, that’s the most apt description, as elements of this film feel like they meet The Matrix and Wanted halfway.
Mark Wahlberg is pretty much our The One in this film, and has a bit of the composure of Keanu Reeves as Mr Anderson (The Matrix) and the alarmism of James McAvoy as Wesley Gibson (Wanted). And our man finds his Angelina Jole/ Carrie Ann Moss in Sophie Cookson, who tells him who he is/was, a story that’s not quite believable. But Infinite isn’t exactly a great imitation, as it mostly seems to adopt much of the off-putting drawbacks of a futuristic action sci-fi.
Infinite is a movie about a group of people with the unique ability to not only reincarnate, but also the ability to remember their past lives and the skills they adopt. As Sophie Cookson put it as Nora in the film ‘If you think you speak Russian, that’s because you were Russian’. This group of people is split into two factions, The Believers – who think their ‘gift’ is a way to help humanity – and The Nihilists – who see it as a curse and seek to end all life on the planet as a means to prevent themselves from getting reincarnated ever again, which is extreme, to say the least.
Sidebar: The Nihilists’ plan – spearheaded by Bathurst, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor (and Rupert Friend) does seem a little odd, not least because it begs a few questions. Do they know their reincarnation limits them to just one planet? What if they destroy life one earth, and get reborn in Mars? Can’t they simply use suspended animation or something less drastic?
The above may seem cheeky, but it also highlights many problems with Infinite. This movie has too many questions, or more appropriately, this movie is too questionable, to be realistic. It’s odd how in a sci-fi pic with retractable steering wheels and weapons capable of putting people’s memories and souls onto some kind of hard drive, it’s its character actions and motivations that are the least believable bits of it all.
Infinite adopts a glaring imitation game, again, The Matrix and Wanted, among others. But it then adds to that some shallow elements of its own to make it even less appealing. It’s not just about the cliche, it’s that the cliche is bad. It’s not just that you’ve seen this before, it’s that you’ve seen it much better than this. Infinite substitutes a cool speech for any semblance of a sense of depth, mistakes and histrionics for conflict. Amidst all the action, there’s no tension. Amidst the threat of existential collapse, there’s no real sense of dread. Infinite lacks conviction, and is far too isolationist to work.
Some of the action scenes are quite nice to watch, and if you’ve seen an Antoine Fuqua pic before, he doesn’t quite disappoint in that regard here. But virtually every other bit fails. The plot is too shallow and too hasty, and the dialogue is incredible artificial, the latter is little more than rehashing some lines from other sci-fi pics.
Paramount has entered into the streaming game, and has dropped its first original Infinite. Its first try, though, reeks of ‘what not to do’. In short, Infinite is pretty much one of the films that doesn’t make you want to read the book.
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