Invincible (2023)

The last forty-eight hours of fourteen-year-old Marc-Antoine Bernier (Léokim Beaumier-Lépine) is recounted. His tragic end is being brought to life, and Invincible tells the world exactly what it was like to be this young man.

Invincible is bookended brilliantly, starting off strong and then returning to that point (from a different point of view) at its conclusion. However, the rest of the film lost me, as I struggled to remain focused and to appreciate the majority of the story. The open and close, however, are perfectly constructed as viewers are immediately pulled into the emotion that surrounds Marc-Antoine. The film begins with silence, at least on the part of the film’s protagonist; and viewers listen to his mother speak to him while he sits and clearly stews in the thoughts that circle around in his head. I think at this moment, Writer-Director Vincent René-Lortie knows that he will either win or lose his audience.

René-Lortie ensures that he appeals to his viewers at this time, and the emotion that exists at this point is the strongest of the film. However, the emotion in Invincible becomes stagnant at this point. For the next twenty minutes or so, I couldn’t detect an ounce of emotion, and I became bored.

René-Lortie brings emotion back into the picture in the final minutes of Invincible. I keep using that word “emotion” over and over again, and honestly, that’s the only thing that I can think of when recounting my viewing experience here. Invincible doesn’t do much else. The pacing is wonky, the characters are ultimately uninteresting, and Invincible really didn’t do much to entertain. Invincible appears to be something like therapy to René-Lortie, and I can certainly understand how revisiting the tragic death of a friend, one that raised so many questions for him as a child, could help him. However, I’m not sure that the film works the same for viewers. There’s a disconnect, and even though emotion makes its way into the film at the start and the finish, I can’t think of another thing that appealed to me throughout the course of the film.

Written & Directed by Vincent René-Lortie.

Starring Léokim Beaumier-Lépine, Élia St. Pierre, Isabelle Blais, Pierre-Luc Brilliant, Ralph Prosper, etc.

⭐⭐⭐⭐½/10