Infinite Review

There's a lot of expectations for movies today. People want bigger universes. Better stories. Smarter writing, the works. But it's a lie. We as humans are sometimes completely satisfied with "mediocre." And that's what the Paramount+ original "Infinite" is. I counted three good scenes and two bad ones- not a bad average for a direct-to-streaming science fiction action flick.

The remainder are boilerplate exposition and boring retreads, but hey, it wasn't like I had anything else to do that night I sat on my couch and pressed "play."

Surprisingly absolutely no one, all the best parts involve car chases, guns and hand-to-hand combat, and director Antoine Fuqua proves once again that he knows how to handle not only the actors but the special effects. They're not all that special themselves, but I could tell who was firing at who and who was tailing who; now that's special.

Mark Wahlberg plays Evan, one of the titular "infinites," who currently can barely pay his bills or even get a job (though he obviously somehow pays for a gym membership). He's also an addict, who forges samurai swords in exchange for his pills. A deal goes wrong, he's arrested, but that sword! That's all it takes for the fellow infinites to find him, both the bad guy Bathurst (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and fellow hero Nora (Sophie Cookson), who busts him out the police station.

Though what the infinites can and can't do is only mildly defined, but a few new abilities are wisely shown over the course of its zippy runtime, allowing for new plot developments and ways to show people in danger. When Evan is hanging onto a plane by nothing but one of his blades of steel, he's able to become unaffected by gravity and walk without issue as the machine roars through the sky. Of course only moments later, he suddenly forgets this power and is bounced about the hull as the aircraft is crashing down. Inconsistencies add a sort of goofy sense of fun to what is otherwise an overly serious series of insignificant stunts.

We travel from set piece to set piece, all an excuse for bullets to fly and people to die. But won't they just be reborn? Bathurst's got that covered; using this special bullet, he's able to trap the "soul" of someone in a computer chip, blocking any and all reawakening. This adds a real threat to our protagonists, something that equally middling works like "The Old Guard" failed to accomplish.

Now I'm not going to herald any of this as particularly original, because it's not. But what is notable is the antagonist's wish: he is simply tired of being reincarnated. No monetary motivation, no plan to dominate the world- he just is done with it all. His honest demands are refreshing in a cinematic marketplace filled with stereotypical incentives of, in Dr. Evil air quotes, money and power. Why doesn't he just shoot himself with one of these unique rounds and save us all the trouble? Hey, I already said there were plot holes.

Of the "bad scenes," they all contain one crucial one thing: dodgy CGI. During that aforesaid jet scene where Wahlberg, or at least his stuntman sprawled out across on a greenscreen, hangs on tight. It's frantically cut to the point of distraction, with a body that moves inorganically like a bad video game.

But that's enough of the negative, because the good stuff is pretty decent. Take when Even is busted out of the precinct, early on, which leads to a vehicular pursuit inside the building. For all I could tell, there were real cars in a real building breaking through real walls and real furniture. Is it thrilling? Not exactly, but it kept me from looking at my phone, which is the real enemy of today's home entertainment.