Infinite is dumb as a box of rocks. It’s also slickly produced and it looks good. But it also has a numbskull script that can’t get out of its own way and piteously poor narration that suggests the screenwriter, director, or producers think their audience is dumb as a box of rocks too.

The flick has an intriguing, if familiar, premise. It’s about a group of people who are reborn after every death remembering their past lives and retaining all the skills they previous possessed. Some of these people want to help the world, some would rather end it. Which is as good enough excuse to fight as any, I suppose.

Mark Wahlberg and his perpetual confusion stars as a guy who hasn’t quite figured out why he can forge a katana and knows the chemical makeup of gunpowder. Spoiler alert: he’s reincarnated poorly this time around. But now the goodies and the baddies are after him because, in his previous life, he stole and hid a McGuffin everyone wants.

This dumb movie starts with pretty abrupt narration explaining to us knuckle-dragging Neanderthals the premise… and then spends the next hour explaining it to Mark Wahlberg’s confused face. It’s a problem when the closest touchstone film – Highlander – has more screenwriter maturity and intelligence in its reveal of its Big Idea… and that movie opens at a pro wrestling match.

Extended exposition dumps are usually a bad thing but they can work… just ask The Matrix and Inception. But it doesn’t work here and sends the movie over a cliff of unnecessary explanations mixed with vague hand-waving nonsense. It leaves a bunch of questions on the table while also driving other points home like a railroad spike through the head. It’s never half as interesting as the movie thinks it is.

And all that just gets in the way of some action scenes that, shall we say, occasionally stretch the boundaries of credulity. They are big ol’ kerblooms and kerblams… impossibly dumb and goofy stunts and sequences that, since the movie is well put together by a talented director, are somewhat enjoyable. It’d perhaps help if they existed on this side of reality… but they can still entertain in their low-brow kerblooey and kerblammy ways.

Unfortunately, that’s not quite enough to get the movie over the impossible hump of its own dumb script and sluggish pacing. But maybe it’s enough to be at least a little entertaining for one watch (that you’ll likely forget about in a few days). But I just wish the script wasn’t so relentlessly trying to sabotage itself and that the filmmakers had more confidence in the audience.

Score: 74