Summary
Zero Day can’t escape a saggy middle and some too-obvious characters and plot points, but De Niro firmly anchors the drama all the way to a sizzling conclusion.
The first thing you’ll notice about Zero Day is the cast. Netflix has spared no expense here, assembling an Avengers-style who’s-who of serious character actors to give this timely political thriller the gravitas it deserves. But even among such hallowed company, Robert De Niro (The Irishman; Angel Heart; The War with Grandpa) stands alone, a mighty sourpuss who anchors this largely very good show even through a pesky middle period where the pacing sags and the attention to detail becomes a little overwhelming.
And it’s hard to make a political thriller these days. Every issue is as contentious as it has ever been and the divide between each “side” is a zero-sum game of petty one-upmanship where winning trumps being right, attention is better than accuracy, and even a minor difference of opinion is grounds for total scorched-earth destruction. Any show that wants to exist in that climate, at the risk of alienating everybody by being too much of one thing or not enough of the other, has to have a cast like this to reassure people that there’s a serious drama underneath.
But how serious is Zero Day, really? It’s built on a bedrock of plausibility, at the very least. The title refers to a comprehensive cyberattack that brings the U.S. to a standstill for a full minute, resulting in thousands of deaths and no real leads. As an ominous message – “This will happen again.” – crops up on citizens’ smartphones, the power goes out, cars crash, equipment fails, and planes tumble from the sky. The attack reminds everyone how vulnerable they are; how dependent they are on devices and systems that can so easily be wrested from their control.
It’d be a pickle for any president, but it’s Evelyn Mitchell (Angela Bassett – as seen in Mission: Impossible – Fallout; Otherhood; Gunpowder Milkshake; Black Panther) who finds herself dealing with it. In the manner of all elected officials, she decides to pass the buck. She sets up the Zero Day Commission, which is designed to investigate the attack with the full might and resources of Uncle Sam but at a convenient arm’s length from the president herself, who instead appoints former President George Mullen (De Niro) to head up the commission.
Mullen is well-known and widely liked for a single term in the White House defined by strong ex-military leadership and bipartisan politics. Who better to get the country aligned in this time of national crisis? The only problem is that Mullen has some skeletons in his closet that capped him to a single term and are making writing his memoirs pretty challenging. He’s also getting on a bit, and he may or may not be starting to fray at the edges, mentally speaking.
(L to R) Jesse Plemons as Roger Carlson, Mozhan Navabi as Melissa Kornblau, and Eden Lee as Agent Angela Kim in Episode 102 of Zero Day. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
I’m reluctant to give any more specifics away but just know this – De Niro is very good here. His hangdog face can barely emote anymore, but he has such a sensational screen presence that it scarcely matters. He has a couple of extended sequences – a threatening interrogation and a Congressional testimony being particular stand-outs – where he’s absolutely brilliant, and well worth the price of admission on his own. But he’s far from alone.
The amount of stars backing De Niro up in Zero Day is preposterous – Jesse Plemons (as seen in Game Night; I’m Thinking of Ending Things; The Power of the Dog) plays his trusted right-hand man, Lizzy Caplan (as seen in Extinction; Fleishman Is in Trouble) his daughter, with whom he has a testy relationship, to put things mildly, and Joan Allen his wife. Connie Britton (as seen in Joe Bell; Luckiest Girl Alive; Dear Edward) turns up a bit later as his former Chief of Staff, Bill Camp’s (Vice) the CIA Director, Matthew Modine’s (Wrong Turn) the Speaker of the House, and Dan Stevens (Beauty and the Beast; Colossal) plays a gratingly accurate left-wing TV pundit who’s very confident about everything but knowledgeable about painfully little.
Some of these characters are archetypes to be sure, but they’re brought to vivid life by highly capable performers who’re treating the material, heightened though it may be, with appropriate seriousness. Some things feel perhaps a little too on-the-nose – a sleazy tech billionaire exploiting an influential social media platform, for instance – but for the most part the subjects and themes are given weight and respect without sliding into made-for-TV melodrama.
It’s the middle portion that’s the issue. There are only six episodes in Zero Day but it’s only the premiere and the final two that really zing; everything else is solid but feels like it’s treading water, miring the core plot with red herrings and topical subplots just to delay the inevitable. But the inevitable, when it comes, is well worth the wait, with both De Niro and the show itself reaching their respective high points just in time for the finale.
