With 'Ten Thousand Saints' Ethan Hawke Officially Becomes Indie Cinema's Dopest Dad

It’s hard to think of an actor these days with an IMDb page as far-ranging and fulfilling as Ethan Hawke. In the past two years alone, he’s starred in an Oscar-nominated pop phenom drama (Boyhood), a mind-bending time-travel indie (Predestination), a war drama (Good Kill), and a coffers-lining horror hit (The Purge). He even has his own franchise, courtesy of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy. At 44 years old, Hawke has never been more engaging or surprising, in part because he’s clearly having more fun than he ever did in his broody, moody twenties. And few films show off Hawke’s easy-goin’, good-times-havin’ vibe as Ten Thousand Saints, which premiered Friday night at the Sundance Film Festival.

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Based upon Eleanor Henderson’s 2012 novel, Saints follows a trio of troubled youths (played by Emile Hirsch, Hailee Steinfeld, and Asa Butterfield) as they deal with an unexpected death (and an unplanned pregnancy) in late ’80s New York City. Hawke plays Les, Butterfield’s father, and the other kids’ unlikely father figure: A pot-growing horndog with a bong named Gertrude and a gun named McQueen. When he’s not stumbling out of bed or mucking up one of his various romantic entanglements, Les supplies his de facto family members with the occasional dime-bag and/or life lesson (there’s at least one and a half Hawke N’ Talks to be found here).

In a movie with a deep bench of characters and a seemingly ever-changing tone, Hawke gives Ten Thousand Saints’ an off-kilter center, playing Les with a cackling, crackling energy that’s so loosey-goosey and natural, it seems like he just sort of stumbled onto the set one day and decided to move in for good. His character is, in many ways, a spiritual spin-off of his good-intentioned dad in Boyhood: A guy who, for all his flaws, is an all-knowing, all-seeing slacker sage, casually reeling off pearls as wisdom as though they were burrs stuck to his overcoat. It’s a pleasure, and a bit of a shock, to see Hawke ease into middle age with such giddiness: After all, who would have thought that the once-so-serious actor who wind up as indie cinema’s coolest dad?

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