Zeros and Ones

Ethan Hawke must have been bored out of his skull to make this film during the lockdowns. But he wasn't satisfied and dragged us down into his boredom with him.

Incoherent, pseudo-artistic, boring and much more, but not worth one and a half hours of your life, even in a lockdown. I gave it a try despite the bad reviews, but they are all truthful. You can´t even spoiler stuff because no one can tell what this could be about in the first place.

Just know that this is a film about a guy running around a city. There is no real action, it's certainly not sci-fi in any conceivable way and it is an adventure only in the sense that you are watching it.

The film begins and ends with Ethan Hawke, the actor, talking to the audience about the film. The first part is "I love Abel Ferrara and we are trying to make this film" and the last part is "When I got the script to this I didn't get it and now, after I watched the film and you watched the film, no one gets it". In between lies the movie, a seemingly random mix of scenes filmed in grainy low detail, with unfocused shots, featuring people without names that do random things. I know Ferrara had a grand vision for what the film is saying, but I assure you you won't understand what that was. If you search the web for explanations of the film, they are mostly interpretations of what Ethan Hawke says at the end, not of what happened in the movie.

In that sense, this is true art: I made it, you either like it or hate it, I don't care!

But this is also why this film deserves its low rating. It doesn't care. It's not a communication, where one has to take care the message is both received and understood, it's the mad ramblings of homeless people, the rantings of political figures, that friend who won't shut up and interrupts everyone to talk about themselves, the avantgarde painting of spread feces where you have to believe there is a beautiful painted woman underneath because the artist says so. It's a monologue, a stream of consciousness with which you might resonate, but never truly comprehend. Perhaps this is one of those films that are better on LSD? Who knows.

Bottom line: Spewing out thoughts and perceptions without any structure or care of your audience is not art, it's vomiting. Some might enjoy it, for their own reasons, but that's all it is.

Looking at the poster and short description, I thought I'm in for a beer+movie night, something in line of Olympus Has Fallen or Jack Ryan movies - bombing, hero, action, maybe even a babe - typical "I am not really a grown man at heart" kind of movie. Boy, was I mistaken. It's some artsy-fartsy all-dark shaky-camera blurred-pics movie, with very - VERY - convoluted story. I believe it was funded by Kickstarter, and it would explain quite a bit.

Ethan Hawke makes a speech in the beginning of the movie. OK, weird. Then he makes a speach at the end of the movie, in line of "I just watched it, and you just watched it" - pauses, and they you think "he's going to say 'I have no idea what we just both watched', he's going to say it!" - but he doesn't. Pity, that'd be a masterpiece :D.

I am stunned how seasoned writer and director Abel Ferrara tried pawning off this nonsense as a film. It was the most convoluted, incoherent, incohesive nonsense I've ever seen. The story makes about as much sense as the title, Zeros and Ones. Those must be the ratings out of 10? Scenes were random and just came out of nowhere, It felt like a bunch of rejected 1980's screenplays that were shredded, then randomly taped together. Slow mo's. Unfocused and blurred. Shaky cam enough to set off a seizure. I wouldn't even expect this quality from a 5th grade drama class. It's a generous 2/10 from me, only because I feel bad for Hawke, and I did like the electric guitar score.