Zero Day Review: Netflix's Clunky Political Thriller Leaves An All-Star Cast Stranded — Now, YOU Grade It!
The sheer star power on display in Netflix's new thriller Zero Day is impossible to ignore. Robert De Niro! Angela Bassett! The Friday Night Lights duo of Connie Britton and Jesse Plemons! I wouldn't blame anyone for checking out Zero Day (now streaming on Netflix; I've seen three of the six episodes) just to bask in the glow emanating from these luminaries. But unfortunately, they're stuck with a clunky script that buries them (and us) in endless exposition and preposterous twists. Glum, convoluted, and ultimately hollow, Zero Day might look like prestige TV — but once you look more closely, you start to see how empty it is.
De Niro stars as George Mullen, the former President of the United States who gets called back into duty when a mysterious cyber attack stops all phones, computers and electronic devices for one minute, leading to thousands of deaths and complete chaos. It's up to Mullen to find out who's responsible... but not everyone wants him to find the answer. Packed with political espionage and far-reaching conspiracies, Zero Day plays like a second-rate mash-up of House of Cards and Homeland — which makes sense, with Homeland vet Lesli Linka Glatter directing all six episodes. It also serves up some truly deranged plot twists that rival anything Carrie Mathison dealt with. (OK, maybe not that assassination by pacemaker.)
Co-created by Eric Newman (Griselda), former NBC News president Noah Oppenheim and New York Times journalist Michael Schmidt, Zero Day is a hodgepodge of worn-out prestige TV tropes that barely holds together — more concerned with keeping us guessing than with telling a satisfying story. (Look, there's a surprise affair! Ooh, there's a shocking death!) We never get a real sense of the devastation an attack like this would cause, outside of a few news reports. Compare that to Hulu's Paradise, which also tackles a catastrophic event, but takes the time to build out an emotional framework — so that when things happen to people, we actually care.
The premise here is certainly a compelling one, but the plot is so overstuffed with suspects and motives, the characters spend most of their time spitting out exposition and backstory at a machine-gun pace. It's a lot! Too much, actually. This may be the one time when a streaming show is too short; six episodes don't leave the writers any room to flesh out the characters. Zero Day also dips its toes into today's political strife, but it feels a step or two behind there. As firebrand political commentator Evan Green, Dan Stevens has to yell things like "the lamestream media" without a trace of irony.
So we end up with a bunch of stars left adrift by the material they've been given. De Niro is fine, I guess, but this role doesn't give him enough to sink his teeth into. He's actually done superb work in recent years, in The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon, but he seems to be on cruise control here. (Plus, a surprise complication in Mullen's personal life just adds an extra layer of confusion.) Bassett is, frankly, wasted as the current U.S. President Evelyn Mitchell, reduced to a glorified cameo. Watching her deliver a thundering address from the Oval Office is fun, but it doesn't make up for how little we see her.
Some of the supporting roles fare better: Plemons brings a jittery menace to slick fixer Roger Carlson, and Lizzy Caplan burns with a righteous fury as Mullen's rebellious daughter Alexandra. (Britton doesn't show up until Episode 3 as Mullen's chief of staff Valerie Whitesell, meanwhile, with precious little of her usual Tami Taylor sparkle.) But mostly, any flicker of emotional complexity gets trampled by the plot as it barrels forward in five different directions at once. A whole lot happens in Zero Day, it's true... but I can't say I cared much about any of it.
THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Netflix's thriller Zero Day may have a star-studded cast, but they're saddled with a convoluted script that falls well short of their talents.
So that's our take — but what's yours? Zero Day is now streaming on Netflix, so if you've seen it, give it a grade in our poll, and hit the comments to share your first impressions.
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