Netflix's New Main Hit Is Robert de Niro's Political Thriller – Don't Waste Your Time (It Has 54% on RT)
This is a disappointing project from the creators of Homeland.
Netflix has released a six-part political thriller, Zero Day, about an ex-president investigating a massive cyber attack on the US. A lot of great actors unfortunately do not make this series great or particularly acute.
What Is Zero Day About?
George Mullen (Robert De Niro) served only one term as President of the US, after which he voluntarily resigned from office due to his own memory problems and his son's drug overdose.
Soon after, the country is hit by a devastating cyber attack that kills 3,402 people. He is offered the chance to lead a new commission to investigate the incident – the Zero Day Commission.
Hoping to find the perpetrators, he is given unlimited powers that threaten to wreak havoc on society. At the same time, Mullen is suffering from hallucinations and showing the first signs of impending dementia, which only exacerbates the current situation.
Zero Day Was Made by Political Thriller Masters & Stars Robert De Niro
February is a busy month for US presidents. One gets killed in Paradise, another turns into the Red Hulk and destroys Washington in Captain America: Brave New World. And George Mullen could have easily run for a second term, but didn't – presumably because he was mourning the death of his son to drugs.
The director of all six episodes is Lesli Linka Glatter, who has worked on some of the best shows, from Twin Peaks to Homeland. Zero Day shares DNA with these and a host of other paranoid political thrillers about a country in peril.
But it's rare that such a representative force rushes to save it. This is essentially the TV debut of the 81-year-old Robert De Niro. In a way, that's reason enough to watch Zero Day.
Mullen's Mental Problems Is the Most Interesting Detail about the Main Character
Mullen must uncover a conspiracy, but the situation is complicated by the fact that the main character begins to experience visual and especially auditory hallucinations, in which the Sex Pistols song plays a central role.
This allows De Niro to immediately diversify his rather straightforward role of an honest and wise politician.
Zero Day Is an Uneven and Unconvincing Political Drama
As pure escapist entertainment, Zero Day works better, but not by much. Half of the plot is left hanging helplessly in the air. The soap opera of who's sleeping with who, who's having kids with who, mostly just slows down and complicates the already confusing plot.
And characters like the mysterious Mossad agent whom the US president calls with a code greeting to find out what's going on would have been fantastic even in Homeland.