Two American strangers wake up in the Senegalese capital of Dakar with
time bombs strapped to their chests.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Jean Luc Herbulot
Starring: Hus Miller, Cam McHarg, Willem Dafoe
Congolese filmmaker Jean Luc Herbulot's second
feature, Zero, goes from zero to 60 within seconds of its opening. But the adrenalised
energy eventually hits a wall, plummeting from 60 back down to zero over
the course of a second half that loses interest in its action set-pieces
and switches to clunky political sermonising.
Ever since Scorpio sent Harry Callaghan on a wild goose chase from one
San Francisco phone booth to another in 1971's Dirty Harry, we've had multiple movies in which a protagonist finds themselves at
the mercy of a voice on the other end of a phone, forcing them to perform
a series of tasks if they wish to avoid harm befalling either themselves
or their loved ones. Zero is a coked-up version of this premise, one which resembles the
manic Jason Statham vehicle Crank with a pair of anti-heroes frantically dashing across the
Senegalese capital Dakar to appease a maniac manipulating them through an
earpiece.
An American stockbroker, whom we only know of as #1 (Hus Miller,
who co-wrote the script with Herbulot), wakes on a bus with a bomb
strapped to his chest and a timer counting down from 10 hours. Across
town, another American, #2 (Cam McHarg), a gruff, bearded
ex-military criminal, finds himself in the same situation. Both men
receive instructions from a voice in their ear (supplied by Willem Dafoe), requiring them to carry out five "missions," which involve murdering
various figures around the city. After completing their first individual
missions, the two Americans meet up and work together to complete the
rest, all while trying to find a way out of their predicament before their
timers reach zero.
Zero initially hooks us with its madcap energy, Herbulot's camera
dashing and darting Sam Raimi-like through the narrow alleyways of Dakar's
slums. #1's first mission, which requires him to steal a phone belonging
to a hulking wrestler, establishes a comic tone that suggests we're in for
a wild ride. Miller, all sweaty nerves, channels the more comedic side of
Mark Wahlberg with his dumb guy in trouble persona. When #1 and #2 are
united, there are hints of a Bud Spencer/Terence Hill dynamic, with #1 the
handsome Hill surrogate who likes to talk his way out of trouble,
ultimately relying on the fists of the Spencer-esque #2. Dakar is imagined
as an African cousin of the Manhattan of John Carpenter's Escape from New York, populated by colourful underworld figures.
This cartoonish tone dissipates around the halfway mark as the plot
starts to become clear and the movie becomes much darker in its tone. The
protagonists crudely represent the two sides of how the Global South views
the US, a combination of wealth and brute force, but just in case this
wasn't clear enough for us, Zero resorts to a series of didactic speeches making its politics all
too obvious. At one point the movie practically pauses to deliver what
looks like a '90s Michael Jackson video, a montage of African faces
soundtracked with a speech about how awful America is. Whether you side
with its political views or not becomes irrelevant as Zero botches its primary task of delivering a fun action thriller as it
pounds us with its sermonising. Had Herbulot been able to weave his
political points organically into the action, Zero might have stood up to its obvious John Carpenter influences by
simultaneously giving us genre thrills and food for thought.
Instead, Zero is half fun action romp, half eye-rolling high school level
politicising.
Zero received its UK Premiere at
the Glasgow Film Festival on March 6th.
