The last time Mark Wahlberg and director Antoine Fuqua teamed up was for underwhelmed action thriller SHOOTER back in 2007. Now they’re back together and hoping to start a new sci-fi/action adventure for Paramount Pictures.

Evan McCauley (Mark Wahlberg) has been living a tough life, he couldn’t hold a steady job because of his illness. He keeps seeing visions of people in the past that he doesn’t know and was told by doctors that he’s suffer from schizophrenic. Needing medications to calm down his visions, he decided to build a samurai sword for a local drug dealer in exchange for the meds. Unfortunately, the deal went south and Evan was arrested by the cops. While waiting in an interrogation room, a man named Bathurst (Chiwetel Ejiofor) came in and starts questioning Evan about his past lives. Not knowing what’s going on and suddenly his life is in danger, came to his rescue is Mora (Sophie Cookson).

After evading Bathurst and his men, Mora took Evan to a hidden place called The Hub. This is where Evan learns about his past lives and the ongoing war between the two rival groups of reincarnated, the Believers and Nihilists. The Believers wants to preserve lives on earth, while the Nihilists, along with its leader Bathurst, wants to destroy every living thing on this planet. Bathurst wants a dooms day device called The Egg and he believes Evan knows where that device is located. Once Evan learned about his past lives and self-defense skills, he must save the world and take down the baddies.

The script is written by Ian Shorr and Todd Stein and it is loosely based on a book named The Reincarnationist Papers by D. Eric Maikranz. I’ve never heard of the book before, so I don’t know how faithful the script is to the book. Reincarnation has been explored in other films, but I don’t think it’s been incorporated into a big budget action picture until now. While the story is kind of interesting and silly at times, it never tried to be original. The structure of the script is very similar to The Matrix, basically Evan and Mora are Neo and Trinity. Tasked with bringing the script to the screen is director Antoine Fuqua. The film has a sleek production design and globe-trotting locations thanks to its big budget. Although, I thought some of the visual effects looked a bit amateurish. Just like the script, Fuqua didn’t do much to elevate the visual side, for the action scenes, he borrowed a lot of elements from The Matrix, Fast & Furious series and the big showdown between Evan and Bathurst looks very similar to the climactic scene from James Bond: Die Another Day.

When it comes to performances, Wahlberg was a total miscast here as the lead. His character was supposed to be this fish out of the water type but it’s kind of strange watching a man in his 50s just learning about his “purpose”. Chris Evans was originally cast as the hero but had to drop out because of scheduling conflicts. Evans probably would’ve been a better choice here. Cookson didn’t do much either as the second lead, I thought her acting was sort of strange, she always had this smirking look on her face in every scene. Dylan O’Brien also has a small supporting role and was featured in the big opening action scene. The only main cast member that looked to have a good time was Ejiofor, whose villainous role was the only best thing in the film. He stole every scene he’s in and outshone the hero Wahlberg.

Despite the flaws in this film, I did enjoy it for what it was. A silly action adventure that has some cool and thrilling action scenes. It didn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes this type of genre ,but if you have Paramount + then I think it’s worth a watch. I probably would’ve been mad had I paid like $20 to see it in theater though. 

So have you seen INFINITE? Well, what did you think?

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