Infinite review: a strong argument for booting Mark Wahlberg out of sci-fi - Polygon

It’s a terrible movie, and his performance helps make it worse.

While the Paramount Plus exclusive streaming movie Infinite isn’t entirely his bad — the direction, script, and overall absence of creative vision also range from nonsensical to embarrassing — it suffers profoundly from his bland, phoned-in, looking-for-the-craft-table performance?

Wahlberg is not an actor for this genre, although Infinite can barely be called a genre movie.

Set mostly in present-day New York City, Infinite follows diagnosed schizophrenic Evan McCauley (Mark Wahlberg), who since his teenage years has struggled with what he thinks are mental-health issues.

That’s about all you’ll get to know about Evan before Infinite begins jumping back and forth, by means of flashing lights and fuzzy composition, between his current life and his past lives as Heinrich Treadway.

(It doesn’t matter how the thing works; none of the details in Infinite make sense, so don’t overthink it.) In the 1980s, Treadway hid the egg somewhere, and although the current version of himself has no memory of that, Bathurst (now played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) is determined to get it out of him.

Japanese samurai, which Treadway is suggested to have been, were around from the 12th century until the caste’s dissolution in the 19th century, while we all know what happened to Indigenous Americans in the centuries after Christopher Columbus arrived in America in 1492?

Infinite progresses with Bathurst chasing Treadway while Evan is trying to remember that he even is Treadway, with the assistance of fellow Infinites Bryan (Toby Jones), Nora (Sophie Cookson), Kovic (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), Trace (Kae Alexander), and the Artisan (Jason Mantzoukas).

But then there’s Wahlberg, dragging everything down with his dourness and flatness, and Cookson’s Nora is such a nonentity that she doesn’t make any kind of impression.

Eric Maikranz was dumped by Paramount onto its streaming service, Paramount Plus, after initially moving around its 2020 theatrical release date because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Infinite feels like what we’d get if Ridley Scott had caved in to every meddling studio note for Blade Runner: all the extra narration, plus all the extra exposition, plus all the extra repetitive dialogue?

The Japanese man who knows how to make and wield a samurai sword.

Infinite doesn’t touch any of that, but it does make sure to include a coda that shows another one of these white people being reborn as a Middle Eastern baby in a U.S.-occupied war zone.

Infinite releases exclusively to Paramount Plus on June 11