Zeros and Ones review – Abel Ferrara’s head-scratching lockdown thriller

Pre-pandemic, Abel Ferrara left us out in the cold with a patience-testing dreamscape about a man whose mission was impossible to make sense of. Now he has done the same, though arguably with even less narrative cohesion, in his latest Zeros and Ones. If you've seen Siberia, you'll know that's no mean feat. This film appears to promise a kind of siege thriller, poster adorned with an image of the Vatican in flames. Misleading as that is, you have to feel for the marketing team: there would be no other way to sell what the director delivers here.

Ethan Hawke (with long hair tied back) plays JJ, a stoic US mercenary assigned to prevent something from happening in the vicinity of the Vatican. His mission will lead him into the company of various unscrupulous characters, a rogue's gallery of terrorists, spies, and drug dealers, for a series of cryptic conversations – and also his own brother, Justin, a madman prone to messianic rants who has been taken hostage, and whom JJ believes to be a “revolutionary.” Justin is also played by Hawke, only with his hair down to help us differentiate.

This is a guerrilla-style pandemic film that seems to address the anxious state of the world through murky footage and a disorienting plot that constantly eludes any attempt to work out what it all means. The result is in many ways impenetrable, but I suspect some will fall under its strange, hypnotic spell, scenes held together by the casting of a game-for-it Hawke, who seems to have a soft spot for morally dubious war thrillers (see Good Kill).

Ferrara shot the film quickly under lockdown conditions, and it reeks of pandemic cinema in the usual ways: empty street locations, crude camerawork, a general sense that the script didn’t take that long to write. People can be seen wearing marks, temperatures are taken with laser guns – what it has to say about the pandemic is anyone's guess, though there is knowing humour in watching Hawke repeatedly adopt to the protocol of using hand sanitiser despite the nature of his work.

Perhaps the most baffling aspect is the inclusion of an intro and outro, which has Hawke – as himself or playing himself, it isn’t clear – addressing the camera and talking about why he decided to make the film and what he thinks now, having made it. I can’t think of a reason to include these moments, except at some studio behest to make sense of something nonsensical. But Ferrara doesn't seem like the type to take notes. These scenes serve a purpose – though maybe only in the director's mind.

Ferrara's late-career experiments are not entirely uninteresting, but they’re not exactly compelling, either. Still, I can’t deny that something of this film’s edgy mood stuck with me, a lingering sense that hidden among the rubble there is a real point being made. Answers on a postcard.

Zeros and Ones is now available on digital platforms.