Zeros and Ones

Zeros and Ones (2021) is an American military thriller directed by Abel Ferrara — watch it online on iFILM. Ethan Hawke plays a US soldier deployed to Rome on an urgent mission: someone is planning to bomb the Vatican, and the clock is already running.

His only lead is his brother, locked up in a Roman prison, who holds information that might stop the attack. Getting to him means navigating a city under pandemic lockdown — empty piazzas, shuttered streets, a chain of murky contacts who may or may not be who they claim. Ferrara shot the film in Rome during 2020, and those stripped-bare locations do the work of a full production design budget.

This is Ferrara in his late-career mode: less genre exercise, more mood study. The action is minimal; the dread is constant. Hawke operates almost entirely in silence and close-up. Audiences expecting a conventional thriller will find something stranger and more unsettling. Stream Zeros and Ones (2021) online on iFILM.