Infinite, movie (2021)
image © Paramount Pictures
Article updated: 2022.01.01
The Infinite (2021) is a contemporary fantasy action film. The movie was reviewed by Kadmon.
Product: Infinite, movie (2021)
Original title: Infinite
Series: -
Setting: fantasy Earth
Product type: Film, Genre: contemporary fantasy action, Style: sci-fi, fantasy, action, reincarnation, super-human abilities
Release: 2021.04.02
Reviewer: Kadmon, Type: Male, 40s, Preferences: Immersive, logical story, consistent setting, prefers surprises to spoilers, prefers establishing elements before referencing them
Watched: very recent (2021.12), first time
Rating: Average (2 out of 3 points), Enjoyment: Weak (2- out of 3 points)
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This is my review of Infinite, a contemporary fantasy action movie from 2021. It's about a guy getting recruited into a secret organisation. The Infinite film has good action scenes but an illogical story, so I recommend it to fans of action movies, who won't care about the plot.
If you'd like to be surprised by the Infinite film, I don't recommend you to watch the trailer beyond 1:18, because it gives away too much of the plot.
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Review (spoiler-free) - Infinite, movie (2021)
I didn't know anything about this movie until I've run into it. The premise was interesting, so I gave it a try without watching the trailer.
The Infinite movie is about a guy getting recruited into a secret organisation.
The basics of the plot are okay, but the logic of the story falls apart in the second half. The pacing is consistent. There are no character arcs. There are plenty of minor logical problems, that started to add up until I got irritated.
The cinematography is great. The sets are varied, the scenes are interesting visually. The action scenes are good, varied, and easy to follow.
The characters are empty shells, that act in a way the plot requires it. Their portrayal by the actors is similarly engaging.
The music (by Harry Gregson-Williams) is good.
Infinite is a watchable fantasy action film, that has everything that makes a good movie, except for the plot. I think only fans of the action genre will enjoy it.
My experience
I was not satisfied with Infinite (2021). I happen to like stories with well-thought, logical plots, and Infinite was anything but that.
Rating: Average (2 out of 3 points). Infinite is a well-made film, with a bad script.
Enjoyment: Weak (2- out of 3 points). Infinite has interesting action, but the problems of logic were too much for me.
Rewatchability: High. I think it's mostly the surprise of the story that makes you feel interested, but the action can still make you enjoy multiple viewings.
Chance of watching it again: Nope.
Chance of watching a sequel: I'd probably watch it.
Infinite, movie (2021)
image © Paramount Pictures
Will you enjoy this?
If you like mystery or thriller movies, you might like Infinite.
If you like action movies (Highlander), you might like the film, as there are plenty of good action scenes in the Infinite movie.
If you don't mind illogical elements in your movies, you can enjoy this.
If you prefer visuals over story, you may love this movie.
Do you need to read the original novel to enjoy this?
There's enough explanation that you'll understand what's going on without reading the The Reincarnationist Papers novel from D. Eric Maikranz.
Watching for plot points
If you are interested in contemporary fantasy stories, I think it's worth watching the Infinite movie for the plot points.
Should you watch this on your own screen at home, or is it worth going to the cinema?
The visuals definitely look better if you watch it in cinema, but having a sound surround system at home also helps immersion.
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Infinite, movie (2021)
image © Paramount Pictures
Review with spoilers - Infinite, movie (2021)
I liked the basic concept and the first half of the Infinite movie.
Cover
The cover of the movie is okay, it doesn't say much, but it doesn't spoil the movie.
The trailer
The trailer starts good, but then it starts to give away too many spoilers.
If you prefer spoilers, it's a great trailer for the Infinite film. If you prefer to avoid spoilers, it could ruin the movie for you.
Promise of the first scene
We see a dream sequence. I assume the dreams will have something to do with the guy who woke up. Probably he was the guy who was left hanging. I suppose he'll get revenge on the death of his partners.
Execution: Yeah, well, we got something like that, for sure.
Plot summary / Synopsis
In Mexico City, there's a wounded guy (Dylan O'Brien as Heinrich Treadway) trying to escape from the police in a car. His partners are killed by a man.
Now: In New York, a guy (Mark Wahlberg as Evan McCauley) wakes up from this dream. He goes to a job interview, but due to his past with mental illness and aggressive events, he's not hired.
The guy forges a sword to sell it for getting his medication, but they want to cheat him, so he gets away with the medications during a shoot-out. He gets captured by cops.
A secret organisation realises that the guy is known to them, and they suspect that the rival organisation also knows.
A strange man (Chiwetel Ejiofor as Bathurst) arrives at the police station, who helps him get some of his memories back. Suddenly a car breaks through the wall, the driver woman (Sophie Cookson as Nora Brightman) gets him out. The strange man pursues them in an armoured car, chasing them, but they are able to get away. The woman tells him that reincarnation is real, and the strange dreams he had were from his previous lives. They fly away on a plane, to the headquarters of the secret organisation.
The guy is told that the strange man had enough of his live of several thousand years, and created a device that could kill all life on Earth. Then he is trained to remember his past lives.
The strange man finds an agent of the organisation and interrogates him.
The evil organisation storms the headquarters of the good organisation, but by the time they get there, the guy is already on a plane to London to meet a memory man (Jason Mantzoukas as the Artisan), who can give his full memories back.
The memory man puts him in a memory tank. The strange man is already at the place, and has a camera feed to them. The guy remembers that he put the device inside his previous body, that was stored at the HQ, that was taken over by the evil organisation. The evil organisation sends an elite team to the place of the memory guy, so they have to escape.
The evil organisation moves the previous body of the guy to Scotland, and gets the device out. The strange guy puts the device on a plane, and leaves, as the woman attacks his place. The guy and the memory man also arrives to help her. Then they split up, the guy goes after the plane, while the other two stay to destroy the stored souls, to free the previous lover of the woman. The guy gets on the plane, with the help of his newly manifested telekinetic powers, and starts to fight the strange man. He disables the device and shoots the strange man with the soul-stealing gun. He falls into the sea from the plane, and dies.
Years later: We see that the new host of the woman meets the new host of her previous lover. Then we see that the memory man finds the new host of the guy in a martial arts school.
The setting
The story is set in a contemporary fantasy Earth, where there are people, the Infinite, who can remember their past lives.
Infinite, movie (2021)
image © Paramount Pictures
The Infinite
A group of people who have memories of all of their previous lives. There are two groups among them.
The Believers want to use their knowledge in service of humanity.
The Nihilists, lead by Bathurst feel that their knowledge is a curse, and they want to end all life on Earth. They created a device to do that. In the end, the device falls into the sea. Bathurst's soul is trapped in a chip that also fell into the sea, and it will be free when the corrosive water destroys the chip.
Neither groups seems to care about the lives of innocent humans.
They have special cars, that are:
- totally bulletproof
- can plow through walls of buildings
- can swap the drivers console between sides
They have technology to:
- Digitise the human soul, so it won't be reincarnated if the body is killed. They can store these souls. They can even put this device in a bullet, so if an Infinite dies by this bullet, his soul is digitised. (Does it work only if they get the bullet in their heads?)
- They store the bodies of previous hosts in a storage, while the cells are still alive.
- There's an egg sized device that can create a field that unravels the DNA of living things. It needs a bigger device to activate. In the end, the bigger device and the egg-sized device both fall into the sea, near the beach.
The protagonist has achieved super-human powers, so he can use telekinesis and super-speed.
The message of the story
It's said that "what you do in your lives will add up into something bigger".
The structure of the story
The scenes of the Infinite film are mostly played in sequence, following the same storyline. There are some flashback scenes.
There is no single viewpoint character.
It has the usual arc of the dramatic structure - introduction, action, resolution.
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Things I liked
- The action scenes look good.
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How does it compare to the other works of the creators?
I haven't seen any other works of the writer (Ian Shorr), or the story writer (Todd Stein).
From the works of the director (Antoine Fuqua), I've seen Training Day (2001), that was good, and King Arthur (2004), that was okay. I assume the problems in the plot were not his fault.
How does it compare to the original source?
I didn't read the original novel. From what I could find, in the novel, people only remembered a couple of lives, not all of them, like it's in the movie.
How does it compare to other adaptations of the same story?
There are no other adaptations yet.
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Infinite, movie (2021)
image © Paramount Pictures
Analysis of the story - Infinite, movie (2021)
I mostly liked the first half of the story, then it fell apart, and the logical problems prevented me from enjoying Infinite.
Problematic elements
The job interview: If the restaurant owner already decided that he won't hire the guy, why did he call him for the job interview? Doesn't he have better things to do with his time?
Delusions as special abilities: I don't like it when the creators use some kind of mental illness as the basis of the special ability of the antagonist. I consider this dangerous for those in the audience who happen to have similar delusions.
Repeating the premise: In the beginning, they tell the same thing in the prologue what the woman tells on the plane. One of this is unnecessary.
Fast travelling: Bathurst is personally at the attack on the HQ, then takes his time interrogating the prisoners. All the while the good guys just travel to the Artificer. However, by the time the good guys meet the Artificer, Bathurst is already there. How?
The memory tank: Why did they put him in the tank to drown, if they don't have medical devices to restart his body once he dies?
Icing the bodies: They put the guy's body in the vault with the device inside. They put all those bodies there, without checking first for foreign objects?
Strange priorities: The windows of the evil HQ are not bulletproof. They are able to create hi-tech devices and bulletproof cars, yet they forget to put some protection on their own HQ? Or put some walls, or even fences around it? This makes it hard to suspend the disbelief on the assault of the girl.
The helicopter with the buggy: How were they able to breach the defences? Are there no radar systems? Or even anti-air defences? Or when the helicopter is in the plain sight of the soldiers, why don't they shoot at it?
Fast travel again: The memory man and the guy are able to reach the evil HQ right at the time the girl attacks. How do they get there so fast?
Shooting the buggy: When the evil woman shoots the buggy with the grenade launcher, and sees that the car is toppled, why doesn't she finish it with another grenade?
The sword: The guy gets out of the buggy with the sword. It's probably the one he left either at the police precinct or at the HQ. How did he get it back? Why did he bring a sword into a gunfight? (Of course he needed that to be able to grab onto the wing of the plane.)
The defenders: When the good guys assault the place, why do the defenders step out of their cover?
Splitting up: When the guy goes after the bad guys, the woman stays so she'll be able to free the spirits stored in the vault. But, if the bad guy gets away, he'll kill all life on Earth, so freeing the spirits would be pointless.
Catfight: When the evil woman attacks the good woman, why does she use a viper instead of her grenade launcher? Or even her pistol?
The helicopter: As the good guys have a combat helicopter, armed with a gun and missiles, why do they send the guy on a bike and a pistol against the plane of the evil guys? Do they hope that his bike will be able to fly? Why do they send the helicopter to kill the guards of the place, when the place is not important any more, as the bad guys left? (Wow, indeed they were hoping for that flying bike, and luckily, the guy was able to not only reach up to the plane, but he was able to jump on it.)
Not checking the dead: The bad guy is so lazy, he doesn't check it whether his shot was fatal. He just believes that one shot will kill the guy with telekinetic powers.
Unanswered questions
- Why didn't the evil guy just press the button, and destroy life? Why did he wait until it was too late?
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Possibilities of improvement
- Cutting the prologue
- Cutting the job interview
- Cutting the scenes that are not shown from the perspective of the protagonist
How it could have been better?
Ambiguous factions: It could have been more interesting if the protagonist would have been the viewpoint character. Thus we didn't know for sure which side is the good one and which side is evil. We just see that the guy is snatched by a girl, who kills dozens of humans in the process, and calls herself the good side. For all the guy knows, even the strange man could have been the good one, because he didn't do anything particularly evil. It's only the audience who is shown that Bathurst is a vile man, who needs to be stopped.
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Behind the scenes
Thoughts about the reviews of others
Some say that the guy could have solved the problem by committing suicide, so the bad guy wouldn't have access to his memories for a couple of years. However, the bad guy would still search for the device, and he might have found it during those years.
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Infinite, movie (2021)
image © Paramount Pictures
Uses for the film - Infinite, movie (2021)
Plot
- There's a guy who wants to destroy all life on Earth, and has the technology to do that.
- There's a secret society of people who remember previous lives from reincarnations.
- There's a secret society with highly advanced technology.
Scenes
- The car chase in the beginning looks cool.
- The memory tank scene can be used to show some test or research that requires a capsule.
Designs
- The SWAT team of the evil Infinites looks cool.
Scenario ideas - Role-playing game scenario ideas
Scenario ideas - Wargame scenario ideas
- Rescue from police: The playing area is a police station. Set it up with police officers around the building. There are some holding cells in the building, one of them holds the target person. Both side wants to leave with the target person, but one side wants to keep the lives of the police officers. Both sides roll for initiative, and the winner chooses an edge they can enter, and spend a turn. On the next turn, the other side enters from another edge. The police will start to shoot at both sides when they attack the building. Unless the location of the target person is pre-determined by a neutral player, roll a d6 when a model opens a holding cell, and on a roll of 1, it's the right place. The side that wants to keep the casualties low will get minus points for every police officer they kill.
- Special vehicles: Both sides have access to one special car-sized vehicle that can plow through walls as if they weren't there.
- Free fall fight: The playing area is one level of the sky. In the middle of the playing area, there's a device, that's free falling. The attackers want to disable / destroy the device. The defenders want to activate / defend the device. The device fell from above, and the fighting forces jumped after it. After the device is set up, roll initiative. The first player chooses a model, and rolls a d6. On a 4-6, the model is out of the game, as it jumped too far. On a 1-3, the model gets in the 1st, 2nd or 3rd third of the area, and you roll another d6 to see which column it will be placed. The models can move normally, but they can't run. If a model gets hit, it gets out of the playing area, no matter the effect. If a model reaches the device, they must spend an action to do what they want to achieve. If any model achieves a hit on the device, then the device moves away from the attacking model. As the device is in the centre of the playing area, this is represented by moving every model except the device towards the attacking model, and then the attacking model is moved in the same direction.
- Storming the hide-out: The defending player sets up the playing area. In the middle of it, there's a fortress, and an escape vehicle. There's the leader and a device that must be randomly deployed somewhere in the fortress. The rest of the defending units can be deployed anywhere in the area. Then, the attacking player deploys their forces on any of the edges. The defending player wins a major victory if both the leader and the device leaves the playing area in an escape vehicle. It's a minor victory if they leave on foot. The attacking player gets a minor victory if they kill the leader or destroy the device. It's a major victory if they achieve both. It's a draw if one of them escapes, but one of them gets destroyed.
Miniatures - 1/50-1/60 (28-32mm scale)
Infinites: Human-sized modern civilians, some with weapons.
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Similar stories - Infinite, movie (2021)
Novels
Eric Maikranz: The Reincarnationist Papers (2009): There's a guy who gets recruited to a secret organisation due to his special origins (able to remember past lives. The basis for this movie.
Graphic novels
The Old Guard (2017): There's a guy who gets recruited to a secret organisation due to his special origins (being an immortal). They have to fight against the evil plan of antagonist.
Wanted (2003-2004): There's a guy who gets recruited to a secret organisation due to his special origins (son of a super-villain). They have to fight the antagonist.
Movies
Highlander (1986): There's a guy who gets recruited to a secret organisation due to his special origins (being an immortal). He has to fight the antagonist.
The Old Guard (2020): There's a guy who gets recruited to a secret organisation due to his special origins (being an immortal). They have to fight against the evil plan of antagonist (creating immortals).
Wanted (2008): There's a guy who gets recruited to a secret organisation due to his special origins (son of a special assassin). They have to fight against the evil plan of antagonist (creating chaos).
TV series & episodes
Highlander: The Series (1992-1997): There's a secret organisation, based on special origins (being immortal). They fight against evil members of the organisation.
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Frequently asked questions - Infinite, movie (2021)
Is the Infinite film based on a book or comics?
Yes, Infinite is based on The Reincarnationist Papers from Eric Maikranz.
Is the Infinite film a remake or reboot?
No, the Infinite film is neither a remake nor a reboot.
Is there a post credit scene in Infinite? Does Infinite have end credit scenes?
No, there's no post credit scene in Infinite.
Where can I see Infinite? Where can I watch Infinite online? Is Infinite available on Netflix? Is Infinite on Amazon?
As of 2021.12.03, Infinite is on Paramount+, or on Amazon with a Paramount+ upgrade.
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Resources - Infinite, movie (2021)
Information
IMDB: Infinite (2021): Database article.
WikiPedia: Infinite (film): Database article.
Letterboxd: Infinite (2021): Database article.
Rotten Tomatoes: Infinite (2021): Database article.
TVTropes: Film / Infinite: Database article.
Creation
: Concept art article.¤
Reviews with no spoilers - Infinite film (2021)
: Review video about the Infinite film with no spoilers.¤
Reviews with spoilers - Infinite film (2021)
: Review article of the Infinite movie, with spoilers. Includes a very detailed plot summary.¤
Analysis - Infinite movie (2021)
: Analysis video, explaining the finale of Infinite.¤
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/infinite-ending-explained.html/
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/infinite-movie-review-mark-wahlberg-reincarnates.html/
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Buying the product - Infinite, movie (2021)
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Have you seen the Infinite film? How do you like the movie? Would you recommend it to others? Do you know reviews or resources you'd like to add? What further thoughts do you have about it? Tell your opinion in the comments!
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