Review by
Blair MacBride
Directed by: Marianna Dean
Starring: Neil Bishop, Jonny Phillips, Martin Bishop, Zoe Cunningham, Zed Josef
Well, as bizarre films go, this is certainly up there. A mind boggling
viewing experience - not in a good way -
Breaking Infinity definitely doesn't beat around the bush in
immediately setting off on its odd voyage of time-travel storytelling.
Luscious Celtic landscapes and a disheveled, shaven Gandalf lookalike
capture the film's first moments. Then, all of a sudden, a perplexed Liam
(Neil Bishop) awakes suddenly in a hospital bed having no
recollection of who he is or of events that have unfolded. His mind begins
to play tricks on him, or what we as the audience perceive to be tricks at
first - but all is not as it seems.
The only other soul around is Emma (Zoe Cunningham), the doctor
looking after him. Shortly after Liam's awakening, she helpfully gives
him, and us, a little context. She suggests that the confused Liam was
caught up in an electromagnetic energy field which caused him short term
memory loss. As the film progresses, though, we find out that Liam seems
to have a connection to something much more profound in military research,
and it's his responsibility to "break the infinity" before time runs out.
As a low budget independent film, kinder stalwarts of the indie cinema
scene may prescribe patience with this film's foibles. That said, the poor
dialogue, awful plot, and '90s era special effects make it difficult to be
a bearer of that leniency. Breaking Infinity emits the vibe
of a poorly put together video-game supra-cut scene, with it in fact
missing the best part: playing the game out yourself and being able to
skip the unimportant filler. In other words, this indie flick feels like
it's only really the writer that knows what's actually going on. Indeed,
Marianna Dean's direction struggles to elevate the film too, and
fails to make a clear passion project decipherable to a wider audience.
Instead of the creative team leading us through a developing plot
naturally - by means of gradually piecing together the story that they
were no doubt trying to achieve - the film is rather filled with endless
changing and irrelevant circumstances. Although each repetitive
interaction between different characters is supposed to carry importance,
in truth, most appear disjointed. Random exchange here, random exchange
there, it really does leave you longing for a quick wrap up of
proceedings.
Neil Bishop as Liam is arguably the only positive to take away from this
project. His performance, albeit in some places cringey, is nevertheless
steady throughout, and he really does as best as is possible with the
script available. Bishop's ability to keep you engaged in whatever he is
saying, irrespective of the drab story, is a real eye catching feat -
definitely one to watch for the near future.
That being said, a decent performance from its lead protagonist can't save
this film even just a smidgen. While the idea of a man being sent back
through time to save the world sounds like an exciting concept (if not
well overdone), in reality, Breaking Infinity is incredibly
odd, difficult to follow and devoid of actual substantive story
development.
Breaking Infinity is on UK/ROI VOD
from July 3rd.
