Did you know Robert De Niro doesn’t like Donald Trump? If you’ve somehow missed it, don’t worry: He’ll be sure to tell you — perhaps even to your face. Just head to any event he’s attending, look for a microphone, and wait for the two-time Oscar winner to put that “jerk,” “idiot,” and “clown” on blast. Knowing De Niro’s vehement antipathy for Trump, it makes sense to see him in “Zero Day,” a starry Netflix limited series about what extreme measures may be necessary to get the United States back on track — and where to draw the line. What makes less sense are the answers provided, both for how we might heal our fractured union and, worse still, for how the conspiracy-thriller wraps up its plentiful plots.
De Niro plays George Mullen, a former president now living a peaceful life in upstate New York outside the public eye. Every morning, he goes for a swim in his backyard pool, takes his dog on a run near a lakeside trail, and sits for a breakfast made by his in-house chef. He’s also working on his memoir, although it would be more accurate to say he’s not working on his memoir. He’s blown his deadlines so many times that his publisher has to send over a potential ghost writer, who impresses on George the importance of the task at hand.
“You’re the last president in modern memory who was able to consistently rally bipartisan support,” she says. “Your memoir has the potential to make a real difference.” But when she brings up lingering doubts over why he chose not to run for reelection, despite near-certain victory, he politely sends her packing. George has already explained why he didn’t pursue a second term — his son died — and he’s in no rush to revisit that era of his life, even in his own book.
Lucky for George, an unprecedented crisis overwhelms any concern for his biography. A cyber attack targeting unknown vulnerabilities in government software systems results in more than 3,000 deaths around the globe. Trains are shuttled down the wrong tracks. Planes are set on a collision course. Chaos reigns, if only for a single minute, as a simple message appears on every single cell phone screen: “This will happen again.”
To keep that prophecy in check, President Evelyn Mitchell (Angela Bassett) and Congress — led by Matthew Modine’s shady Speaker of the House, Richard Dreyer — form the Zero Day Commission, a task force imbued with “all the powers of every law enforcement and intelligence agency put together,” and a few extra capacities to boot. The Zero Day initiative doesn’t have to observe habeas corpus. Its operatives don’t need warrants to enter someone’s home, and they don’t need to provide just cause for detaining anyone they want to interrogate.
“Jesus, we didn’t even do that after 9/11,” George says when first hearing about the Zero Day Commission’s unchecked authority. “You’re just going to grab people off the streets?” “Actually, you are,” the sitting president informs her predecessor. That’s right. They want George to come out of retirement and lead the commission.
Right now, you may be thinking, “Hold on a second — they want an 80-something retired politician to investigate a futuristic cyber attack? Really? A Boomer is going to save the world from tech-savvy terrorists? Actually, I don’t have time for you to answer that. I have to get to my bunker immediately.” Fair enough, but while you’re down there, do remember that George is “a legendarily brilliant investigator,” per a news anchor. More importantly, he’s beloved in red states and blue states. He’s a unifying presence in a time of gaping division. “We need a result everyone can trust, and everyone trusts you,” President Mitchell says.
Before agreeing to the post, George does express concern over the moral and legal transgressions his appointment requires, weighing whether to bear responsibility for what his daughter and New York congressperson, Alex (Lizzy Caplan), describes as “the single greatest affront to civil liberties that anyone has ever attempted.” But George ultimately falls back on a tried-and-not-so-true rationale: If not him, who? If George tells President Mitchell, “Fuck off, I’m retired, go find yourself another dictator to shit on the Constitution,” he knows she’ll do exactly that. And how could anyone else be any more trustworthy than George, who, at least, once upon a time, was democratically elected to lead?
“Zero Day” invites many such quandaries without offering much in the way of satisfying answers. Directed by three-time DGA Award winner Lesli Linka Glatter (“Homeland,” “Mad Men”) and created by Eric Newman (“Narcos”), Noah Oppenheim (“Jackie”), and Michael S. Schmidt, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, “Zero Day” has the behind-the-scenes bonafides to merit its onscreen talent, and it’s engaging as a genre exercise even when it’s frustrating in as political commentary. Glatter, especially, is operating in her element, creating consistent tension from clandestine meetings and coded conversations (all of which are captured in sharp clarity with vivid lighting that’s much appreciated for a story dealing with so many figurative and literal shadows).
As George chases down leads and suspects — fretting over how far to go to get the truth and then how to shape what he’s learned for the masses — he’s forced to confront whether his age is a liability. He takes copious notes in journals that fill up his home library (an analog guy in a digital age), but he also misplaces them and doesn’t remember writing certain parts. Perhaps of greater concern is that George sees things that shouldn’t be there, and hears music when no one else can hear. Is he losing his marbles? Is someone in his inner circle working against him? Should he bow out before he’s compromised any further?
On top of those concerns, he has to weigh offers to help from Monica Kidder (Gaby Hoffman), a Silicon Valley billionaire with her own popular social media app, as well as attacks from extremist talk show host Evan Green (Dan Stevens), and growing political pressures from the outspoken Speaker of the House, the CIA director (Bill Camp), and even his own wife (Joan Allen), who’s waiting to be confirmed for the federal bench.
You’ll notice, my dear, attentive readers, that no one listed thus far has been labeled as a Democrat or a Republican. “Zero Day” goes out of its way to avoid such designations, preferring that viewers of any political disposition can see themselves (and their enemies) in any character. Well, not any character. Kidder is a gender-flipped Musk surrogate, even wearing a goofy baseball cap like it’s part of her mismatched uniform, and Green is just a sane version Ben Shapiro, peddling his sensational “everyman” agenda to spin himself a small fortune. They are who you think they are, while other apparent stand-ins refuse to conform to their real-world counterparts.
Subverting expectations can make for a few exciting twists, but they also dull any salient points “Zero Day” has about our current political landscape. People who say all the right things are revealed to be doing plenty of wrong. Subjects set up as snakes in the grass are given piteous endings. Such “surprising” turns could work in a show that was pure entertainment; a conspiracy-thriller that never asks us to see our present reality in various characters, scenarios, and summations. But here, they feel disingenuous — as if we’re being chastised for taking sides before seeing the full picture, when in the real world, each passing day only reaffirms who deserves our defiance.
I mean, just ask De Niro. He doesn’t mince words over Trump, yet his avatar of assorted ex-presidents asks us to sympathize with a fascist inciting a constitutional crisis and defend an octogenarian who refuses to step aside when faced with ample evidence he’s not fit for (unelected) office. His bipartisan background suggests a version of Reagan whose legacy wasn’t widely disparaged for ruining the economy… or maybe he’s meant to be Obama, only a version who was elected at an earlier time when bipartisanship was still a thing? Too righteous to be an antihero, too flawed to be a genuine hero, George exists in an odd zone of implausibility that still feels distinct from the surreality we’re living through every day.
Just like how a lot of what happens in “Zero Day” seems too simple, too logical, too explicable to also feel realistic, George comes across like he’s been solely constructed to skirt direct comparisons to any one man in order to appeal to everyone watching — much like De Niro’s performance is so stripped down to the basics (in order to make him a broadly inoffensive audience surrogate) that it’s hard to appreciate the textures inherent to a living, breathing human being.
In the end, George doesn’t stand for anything substantial, and neither does “Zero Day.” That the plot can’t muster a message worthy of its established ensemble is certainly an issue. (Shame on me for running out of room to mention the “Friday Night Lights” reunion of Connie Britton and Jesse Plemons.) Though, to be fair, at least one final moment suggests there isn’t a solution to what’s ailing the country. You just have to keep trying your best and see where that leaves you. De Niro sure is. I just wish the same could be said for his latest soapbox.
Grade: C
“Zero Day” premieres Thursday, February 20 on Netflix. All six episodes will be released at once.
