Zero Day

Ex-president George Mullen (Robert De Niro) is enjoying retirement. In his meticulously styled mansion, he hobbles around with a hunched back, writing his memoirs, walking his golden retriever, and eating fried eggs like there's no tomorrow. Life is quieter and despite a couple of obligatory morning pills, he is doing well and clearly not missing life in the limelight. But then the United States is hit by a hacker attack that costs 3,400 lives. Power is knocked out, communications are down, air traffic, public transport, traffic lights... everything is knocked out and the consequences are so severe that current President Evelyn Mitchell (Angela Bassett) orders Mullen to return to the White House where a new job awaits him.

A new commission called Zero Day has been set up and Mullen is ordered to direct the 100+ people ripped from the Secret Service, FBI, and CIA to work together to hunt down the culprits behind the hack attack, and Mullen has every intention of really being tough this time. America demands justice, accountability, and punishment and Mullen's job is not only under pressure and scrutiny from all sides - it comes with a lot of risk as major political powers pull and tug at him the second he steps back into the hot seat.

Zero Day was historic even before it had had its grand Netflix premiere for the simple reason that it is De Niro's first major TV series appearance. The man from The Godfather II and Cape Fear plays an elderly, tested, tired, and cynical ex-president who is at the same time humane and austere in his demeanour. Cracking down on the national threats that exist within America and circumventing the US Constitution to find the culprits of the attack as efficiently and swiftly as possible, means that Mullen's moral values are tested both once and ten times. In the midst of it all we learn that Mullen's daughter sits in the Senate and, unlike her father, believes that the harsh tones sung by the Zero Day Commission do not rhyme with the government's responsibility to the American citizens.

Zero Day builds drama on premises with which we are all uncomfortably familiar, not least today. Terrorist attacks and the US response to them (9/11 and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan), Covid-19, and the violation of basic human rights that takes place in various parts of the world, has been boiled down here to build a sense of doom and totalitarian police state without turning it into a TV series about oppression. Showrunner Eric Newman is constantly balancing on the edge, not dipping his toes too deeply in any of the puddles, spinning some conspiracy theories, YouTubers who get conspiratorial anti-establishment supporters, and everything in between. It's a healthy mix, and despite the use of reality as a template and inspiration, it never feels either "dangerous" or real in Zero Day. This is largely because the story is too narrow and too claustrophobic.

Like House of Cards and other political thrillers, the narrative and conceptual arc is too narrow and constricted. The conspiracy itself is a bit too shallow and the nepotism is too strong, which makes the scope of the plot suffer and feel a tad childish, unfortunately. That said, De Niro is truly brilliant here, proving for the 122nd time what a great actor he really is, with very little means. There is a presence and charisma to De Niro's extreme austerity that allows his "underplaying" to constantly build an intensity and believable seriousness that extremely few other actors can even imagine. This is what Zero Day lives on. The show would probably have bored me if it hadn't been for De Niro (and to some extent Jesse Plemons, who is always good). As it is, Zero Day stays at a strong six. Totally fine and much of that is thanks to old Bobby.