Writer and Director: Jean Luc Herbulot
Watching Zero is akin to being bashed on the head with a sledgehammer in the midday sun in a town square where everyone’s watching on and laughing. It ain’t subtle. Loud, brash, and vibrant from the outset, this 80-minute film from Congolese director Jean Luc Herbulot is relentless.
The premise – on paper, at least – is intriguing. Two Americans wake up in Senegal with bombs strapped to their chests. One (he’s given no name) is some kind of corrupt accountant; Two is an ex-soldier, good with his fists. With instructions given to them by phone, One and Two must carry out a series of missions in Dakar in order to stop the timers that count down on the explosives they wear.
With a drone hovering above and watching their every move, there are flashes of 2015’s Eye in the Sky, Helen Mirren’s taut psychological movie. However, any tension in Zero disappears in the various camera angles, the loud music and the text on screen giving names and locations. More than a film, it’s like an extended music video, or a TV show like Animal Kingdom, although that comparison is a disservice to the hit TV programme, which was, all things considered, quite good. Perhaps, instead, as the drone cameras sweep across the sky to the sound of rap and hip-hop, Zero has more in common with the reality show Luxe Listing Sydney, although the properties are not quite as ritzy.
We watch, unmoved, as our hapless heroes complete their missions around the capital, either to a beach to steal a phone off a renowned fighter or to a commune where young men dressed in peacock finery listen to Vivaldi. And yet, nothing really changes; the sledgehammer keeps pounding away: More music, more fancy shots, more explosions.
Their enemy is unseen, just a voice on the phone sounding like a cross between Charlie and Bosley, both from the 70s TV show Charlie’s Angels. In fact, it’s the voice of Willem Dafoe. However, it becomes clear that the real enemy is America and its imperialism. It’s America’s fault that the Senegalese people live in such chaos, the film and ‘Charlie’ posit, but this theory is rather undone by an unnecessary coda that demonstrates that rather than curing inequality, this enemy is just hellbent on causing trouble.
Hus Miller (One) and Cam McHarg (Two) gamely run around as the two white men who appear as terrorists to the inhabitants of Dakar, while Gary Dourdan (Warrick from CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, another TV show that this film resembles) is the impossibly calm Daniel, an Islamic teacher.
Still, it’s a brave move from Herbulot to take on American imperialism, but it’s just a shame that his film is so rooted in American aesthetics.
Zero is in UK cinemas 25 July.
