Breaking Infinity
A man wakes in a hospital bed, his wounds bandaged, his mind full of fire, explosions and sirens and a contrasting image of an old man in robes, leaning on a stick in a mountain pass at sunset; unable to recall his name but aware that there is something he must do, he attempts to rise but collapses and there is a flash, a discontinuity where he wakes again in the same place but strangely less injured than before.
His doctor less than sympathetic or forthcoming, she grudgingly informs him that his name is Liam and that he is a researcher in a defence facility who was exposed to an intense electromagnetic field which might be the cause of his partial amnesia and short-term memory loss, but Liam is certain that what he has witnessed is beginning of the end of the world, a future that is close and that only he can avert.
A low-budget science fiction thriller set in the minimum-security laboratories of the unnamed and presumably government funded facility and the valleys of Wales, flitting between the two places as Liam comes unstuck, the most exciting thing about Breaking Infinity is the title, David Trotti’s script absent any wit or insight to define or elevate his characters and their motivations or the necessary understanding of the complex subject expected of a science fiction writer.
Tasked with developing a laser cannon which resonates at the same frequency as the cosmic microwave background radiation which for reasons accepted rather than explained allows messages to be sent fifteen seconds to the future or past, an accident involving Liam (Neil Bishop) has placed him in quantum flux allowing him access to all points of time and space for deeper unexplained reasons, though for the sake of the plot he seems to confine his jaunting to the Welsh valleys only a few weeks forward or back.
Directed by Marianna Dean without style or any particular feeling for the genre and co-starring Jonny Phillips as the senior manager overseeing the project, impossibly naïve as he espouses possibilities demonstrated to his satisfaction by a fancy light show without ever considering the disastrous potential of time travel, and Martin Bishop as the old man of the mountain who offers cryptic monosyllabic responses to any question, as egos and fistfights supplant any intellectual ambition the trajectory of Breaking Infinity is sadly but inevitably descending.
The premise of Quantum Leap manifested through the wibbly wobbly back and forth of Doctor Who’s The Big Bang, during his fluctuations Liam fails to ascertain or impart any useful information from or to his associates, not helped by his principal contact being with surly base physician and de facto psychologist Emma (Zoe Cunningham) who seems to be perpetually furious, not with the situation in which they are in but with Liam personally, the eventual declaration of their mutual love among the most unbelievable things in a film which presents a multiverse of options to choose from.
Breaking Infinity will be in UK cinemas from Thursday 1st June and available on digital download from Saturday 3rd July
