Zeros and Ones: Ethan Hawke Dual-Role Thriller Promises Big, Delivers Small

By Thom Ernst

Rating: C-

Maybe you have a friend that, when younger versions of you both existed, you could count on to do all the outlandish things you wouldn't dare. Then, age creeps in, and we all mellow, except that friend who still likes to teeter on the edge of outrageous and exciting. Except now that friend has lost their mojo.

I think of director Abel Ferrara to be like that. Not that Ferrara and I are friends—I met the man, and frankly, he scared me—but as a filmgoer, I could count on Ferarra for audacious takes on such pressing subjects as serial killers addicted to power tools, rampaging crime victims seeking revenge costumed as a nun, or a lieutenant who is, really, really bad.

Ferrara was, in my mind, a sidekick to Sam Peckinpah but wrapped in vast swaths of Samuel Fuller and Monte Hellman. For me, King of New York is the pinnacle of his success.

I bailed on Ferrara early—Body Snatchers killed it for me. And I probably should have come back for Dangerous Game, The Addiction, and The Funeral, but I haven't yet. And so, Zeros and Ones marks my official return visit to a wild, maybe slightly unhinged, old cinema acquaintance. I wish it were a happier reunion. Zeros and Ones sounds more like a suggestive rating scale than the film’s title.

Ferrara is an intellect despite all his bad-boy posturing. Intellect is great, even if lathered on thick enough to mystify a layman thinker like myself. And the intelligence, as evident in his latest film starring Ethan Hawke is now in complete control.

Zeros and Ones will find a handful of deep thinkers, though not much more than a handful, patient enough to muster the energy to unravel Ferrara's pseudo-experimental stab at…what? A psychedelic thriller about leveling the Vatican? An allegorical binge on espionage in times of COVID?

Granted, I wouldn't even know that much if it weren’t for liner notes and a pre-introduction from Hawke himself, who explains straight to the camera Ferrara's unique vision, and Hawke's joy to be able to champion the director. “That's what actors do,” Hawke says in an unprecedented pre-film set-up, “We champion directors.”

I'm grateful for Hawke’s help. Otherwise, Ferrara's efforts, whatever they might be, would have faded into the background of just about anything caught in my peripheral. It's not that Zeros and Ones is uninteresting. Hawke's presence assures our attention, and he's enough of a star to keep us tagging along behind, like prospective employees job shadowing a man who has better things to do.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Hawkes plays a military attaché named J.J. I don't remember an introduction. Had there been, I'm pretty sure I would have been perplexed by a hardened military agent being named after a Disney Pixar character. So, J.J. is on a mission to stop some worldwide calamity and discover if his anarchist brother, a political prisoner (also played by Hawke) is still alive.

Hawke in duo roles is a fun watch, and the brother (for all I know, his name is also J.J.) does have a moment that is, because of Hawke’s performance, full of wit, fire, and energy. The other version of Hawke, J.J.'s military dude, is sullen with eyebrows constantly furrowed. He looks a bit like a slimmer version of Josh Brolin.

The film opens with J.J. arriving by train in Rome. Everyone is wearing a mask. The streets are mostly empty. This is a tour of Rome during lockdown. The scenario is not entirely ineffective, even without knowing precisely what's going on.

There’s a peculiar irony in watching a drug dealer cleaning off Roman currency—a law-breaker following lockdown rules. And in a shiny moment of unexpected humour, when J.J. is rushed at gunpoint into a crowded car, one of the kidnappers quips, “Relax. We are all negative here.”

Ferrara never raises the lighting above the limits offered by an emergency exit sign. And the dialogue he’s constructed is weighted in such didactic religious allegories that it hits like a slap from a Bible Belt. “They will come to crucify you. They will deny that they know you.”

But the film is blessedly short, which does allow for its quirky pace and oddball plotting to play out without exhausting the viewer’s curiosity, even if it is just a series of head-scratching WTF? scenes leading to nowhere.

Zeros and Ones. Directed by Abel Ferrara. Starring Ethan Hawke, Valeria Correale, Stephen Gurewitz and Korlan Madi. Available on VOD beginning January 18.