This movie is about Evan McCauley, played by Mark Wahlberg, who has been troubled his whole life by memories and skills he shouldn't have. Doctors say he has schizophrenia because he remembers places he's never been to and can make a sword even though no one taught him how. Because of this, he can't keep a job and feels lost. After trying to sell a sword goes wrong and he gets arrested, he meets Ted Bathurst (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who says they've known each other for hundreds of years. This introduces Evan to the "Infinites" a secret group of 500 people who remember all their past lives.
The Infinites are split into two groups: the "Believers" who want to use their knowledge from past lives to help the world, and the "Nihilists" led by Bathurst, who think living forever is terrible and want to kill everyone to stop being reborn. Bathurst suffers because he remembers all his past lives from birth, so he creates "the Egg" a weapon that can kill all life on Earth. But the Egg goes missing, Heinrich Treadway (Dylan O'Brien), who was Evan in a past life, hid it before he died.
Nora Brightman (Sophie Cookson), who was Treadway's partner in the past life, saves Evan and explains what's really happening. Even though Evan struggles with his memories and trauma, he needs to remember where Treadway hid the Egg before Bathurst finds it. To help him remember, he gets a dangerous treatment from the weird Artisan (Jason Mantzoukas), whose method is basically drowning him, which is so silly.. that I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
Looking for the Egg becomes a race around the world with chases, betrayals, and fights. The big surprise is that Evan's past self hid the Egg inside his own dead body, which is both ridiculous and somehow missed by all these supposedly super smart Infinites who never thought to X-ray his preserved corpse. At the end, Bathurst tries to use the Egg, but Evan and Nora stop him, though they die doing it. The movie ends with the Infinites coming back to life in new bodies, showing that the cycle goes on forever.
Watching Infinite felt like watching a movie made from pieces of other science fiction movies, stuck together with too much explaining and trying too hard to be cool. It's obviously trying to be like "Matrix meets Wanted" but it doesn't have the deep ideas or good storytelling that made those movies great. The script explains everything way too much—there's narration at the beginning, then characters repeat the same information in conversations, like the movie thinks we're too stupid to understand.
Mark Wahlberg's acting is bad in obvious ways. He looks bored most of the time and says his lines like he doesn't care and just wants to get paid. His character Evan is supposed to be a confused regular guy who becomes great, but when he learns the truth about himself, he barely changes—he's still just Mark Wahlberg, but now he can use swords. Dylan O'Brien, who's only in the first few minutes, was much more interesting and should have been the main character. Chiwetel Ejiofor gives an over-the-top performance as the villain that's entertaining because he's really trying, even though the movie doesn't give him much to work with.
The movie makes several weird choices that don't make sense. The Egg itself (the world-ending weapon) is a dumb plot device, especially since Bathurst already has the power which can trap a soul in a computer chip, which stops Infinites from being reborn. The movie never explains why he doesn't just use this on himself, or what it feels like to be trapped in the chip (is it torture forever, or do you just disappear?). Even if there is an answer somewhere in the dialogue, the movie jumps around so much between locations and action scenes that it never gives us time to understand the world or characters.
The movie's timing is all wrong, with characters suddenly appearing in different countries, action scenes that look good but feel awkwardly placed between long scenes of explanation. The actors don't seem to have good chemistry together, the female characters aren't well written, and supporting actors like Jason Mantzoukas are wasted on joke roles that don't matter. The only good parts are a few action scenes and Chiwetel Ejiofor's occasionally crazy intense acting.
Eric Maikranz, who self-published "The Reincarnationist Papers" (the book the movie is based on), actually paid his readers to help get his book noticed by Hollywood. That risk paid off when the book was found in a hostel, a fun fact that's more interesting than anything in the actual movie. The movie was delayed several times and went straight to streaming on Paramount+ after COVID-19 canceled the theater release.
In the end, Infinite is a movie that could have been good but was ruined by confusing writing, bad editing (probably made worse by pandemic production problems), wrong casting for the lead role, and a tone that can't decide if it wants to be serious or silly.
Watch on Netflix or Amazon Prime