Zeros and Ones
The collective talents of writer/director Abel Ferrara and star Ethan Hawke can't elevate this dull "thriller."
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I’m not terribly familiar with the works of writer/director Abel Ferrara. Sure, I’ve seen his greatest hits and more mainstream shit (“Ms. 45,” “King of New York,” “Bad Lieutenant,” “Body Snatchers”) and I’ve generally liked (but not loved) what I’ve watched. I’ve had interest in seeing Ferrara efforts from the mid-to-late 1990s such as vampire movie “The Addiction” and gangster picture “The Funeral” since peeping the VHS covers at video rental stores back in the day, but never got around to ‘em.
I’m very well versed in the oeuvre of Ethan Hawke. He’s an actor I dug a lot early in his career (“Explorers,” “Dead Poet’s Society,” “White Fang,” “Mystery Date”) only to grow tired of and turn my back on him in the mid-‘90s with “Reality Bites” (a movie I actually like, but Hawke became the poster child for disaffected pretty boy hipster drama best saved for his Mama as a result of it). Hawke quickly got back on my good graces by frequently collaborating with indie wunderkind Richard Linklater for the beloved “Before” trilogy, the hugely underrated and utterly charming Western “The Newton Boys” and the 10-years-in-the-making all-timer “Boyhood.” Recurring partnerships with director Antoine Fuqua – “Training Day,” “Brooklyn’s Finest,” “The Magnificent Seven” (2016) and recent Netflix effort “The Guilty” – hasn’t hurt matters either. In recent years Hawke’s become more of a genre actor by repeatedly teaming with his friend, famed horror producer Jason Blum for flicks such as “Sinister,” “The Purge” and the forthcoming “The Black Phone.”
It’s the collective talent and involvement of Ferrara and Hawke that attracted me to the prospect of reviewing “Zeros and Ones” (available in select theaters – including Indianapolis’ Studio Movie Grill – and on VOD beginning Friday, Nov. 19). Unfortunately, the resulting product is not only a letdown … I outright hated it. I’d consider it one of the worst films of the year, but it’s a stretch to call if a film IMHO.
Hawke does an intro and outro to the picture as himself in which he compliments the recent collaborations between Ferrara and Willem Dafoe, says he was excited to play two different roles in the film, talks about COVID-19 for a bit, admits that Ferrara’s script wasn’t a script so much as an outline and fesses up that he doesn’t know what the movie’s about or what the point of it all is. The prologue and epilogue serve little purpose beyond padding out the scant 86 minute runtime – it’s perplexing as all hell.
Hawke plays a Rome-based soldier with murky intentions named J.J. as well as his revolutionary brother Justin. (Justin only appears in one scene and it’s the best acting Hawke does in the picture with an impressive monologue riffing on Woody Guthrie.) J.J.’s attempting to thwart the bombing of the Vatican and believes Justin has intel which will aid him in his pursuit. J.J.’s unsuccessful in this goal and the Vatican gets blown up. (The rendering of this explosion is embarrassingly bad – it’d honestly be subpar for a PlayStation cutscene from the mid-‘90s.) J.J. visits with Justin’s woman (Valeria Correale) and daughter (Anna Ferrara, Abel’s real-life daughter) and they kiss on the mouth through face masks. J.J. also gets forced into having sex with “laughing Russian agent” (Ferrara’s wife Cristina Chiriac) at gunpoint in hopes of impregnating her. (Way to fake cuck yourself, Ferrara!)
The bulk of “Zeros and Ones” is comprised of grainy surveillance footage and watching J.J. watch said videos. Unless you’re an avid security cam enthusiast or just really get off on watching Hawke watch stuff you need not apply.