Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jason Mantzoukas, Sophie Cookson, Dylan O’Brien, Rupert Friend, and Toby jones.

Directed By: Antoine Fuqua

Where i Watched It: Paramount Plus

English Audio Description Available?: Yes

The Plot: In this cinematic world, reincarnation is a thing, and there are people who refer to themselves as “infinites”, who when they die are immediately reincarnated, and have found a way to regain at least parts of their memory. Except for Mark Wahlberg, because he needs to act confused and ask a lot of questions, so this movie can have a lot of exposition. Inexplicably, Chiwetel Ejiofor signed up to play the antagonist. Unfortunately, the film beats him to it.

What Works: For all the crap everyone has given this film, considering the Golden Raspberry Awards it was nominated for, there is one thing that every critic must concede. Chiwetel Ejiofor is great. He’s great in a crappy movie. He gives to his performance 100%. No more, no less. No overacting, no phoning it in. He’s able to read some of the dumbest lines of dialogue, trapped in scenes with a lethargic Mark Wahlberg, and still make it seem like he’s in a for your consideration reel.

And aside from a few interesting or exciting moments, all of which are rather silly and over the top, Ejiofor is the only reason to actually watch Infinite. I don’t hate Wahlberg, this just is his worst performance in years. So, Ejiofor steals the show. Add to that a rather well shot and interesting beginning car chase, the fact that they somehow worked sword fighting into a modern film, and at times the “so bad it’s good” shenanigans on screen, and Infinite isn’t the worst way to spend your time, but it’s also far from great.

What Doesn’t Work: At least half this film is exposition, because the concept clearly is batshit crazy to begin with. I can’t even… I don’t know where to begin. The bad guy developed an egg that he’s been hunting for lifetimes that will destroy all living things so nothing can reincarnate. An egg. There’s a scene where this is explained, and there’s a graphic on the screen that has a bird laying the egg. I don’t know why. He didn’t create a bird, who then laid the egg. he just made an egg.

And, by the way, when a character ‘jus happens” to have a metal plate in their head, you can bet the film will do something with that. They don’t just do that for no reason. No sir, it’s there for some serious nonsense later. The fact that Antoine Fuqua directed this offends me. The director of Training Day should have cobbled together something better than this.

And while technically it does fit Wahlberg’s character to have him not know what the hell is going on, his dialogue is largely there to further someone else to answer his questions so that the audience can be appraised of this silly backstory. It’s also so poorly acted from him, I’m not really sure even he understood what was going on, or that he was given the script more than 24 hours in advance. He genuinely seems confused, while spouting lines of confusing that aren’t landing. If this isn’t his worst performance of his career, it’s at least bottom 3, and certainly his worst in a long time.

The Blind Perspective: As I always say, terrible movies have great audio description. I don’t know why, but one of these days, something will prove me wrong. The audio description here does a great job of navigating a rather bizarre plot, several tight action scenes, and flashes through time. I’ve seen harder to describe films, for sure, but this isn’t low difficulty either. This is pretty medium-high on the list, and the narration gets every gunshot and sword slash that perfectly times itself to block the bullet. Like i said, shenanigans.

Final Thoughts: I can’t in good conscience recommend this. I’m sure some people will like it, though it seems like most people don’t. It has resurged on the Apple charts, which prompted me to finally review this, but I don’t know why everyone feels the need to add this to their collection. Then again, we all have our guilty pleasures, and maybe this will be yours. I doubt it, but you never know.

Final Grade: D+