Infinite is a 2021 American science fictionaction film directed by Antoine Fuqua. Ian Shorr wrote the screenplay based on a story by Todd Stein, who in-turn adapted D. Eric Maikranz‘s 2009 novel The Reincarnationist Papers.^[1] The film stars Mark Wahlberg, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Cookson, and Jason Mantzoukas.^[2]

From the outset, the filmmaker tries to paint a wide canvas but fails to fashion a detailed visual language. As they wisp and wind down wide, empty streets, in a scene barely stitched together for semi-coherent action, nothing in the costumes, hairstyles, or architecture clues us into what decade we’re inhabiting. Fast-forward to the present “in this life” in New York City and a stream of compositions—a slow-motion bustling Manhattan street bathed in orange sunlight, and cranes reflecting off an office window—read like stock images.