The uproar over Robert De Niro’s presence in Zero Day is quite unfounded. Even the greatest of actors need to let their hair down once in a while. And besides, have you seen some of this all-time great actors recent films, for example War With Grandpa and About My Father?
Zero Day on Netflix is a pulpy political thriller, and De Niro playing the former president of the United States has himself a ball mowing through the massy thought luckily not messy, plot, filled with intrigue and suspense. In publishing parlance, Zero Day is quite a page-turner. Though not quite Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Identity, De Niro’s presence itself assures the series a certain amount of respectability and grace, although I didn’t see the need for the screenwriters (Noah Oppenheim & Eric Newman) to keep moving the pawns constantly to keep audiences’ interest alive.
De Niro looks every inch President material. He is suave and a little befogged by age. Sometimes, he sees things that he shouldn’t be. But the country needs his skills, dammit! Just as cinema needs De Niro. So, the need is symbiotic. And agreeable.
The series never derails, nor does it backtrack on the promise of a gripping thriller.
I don’t know if this is good or bad, but the first episode is the most illuminative. It is here that we encounter De Niro’s George Mullen as a larger-than-life American hero and a frail, ailing human being. The actor brings out both facets with invisible skills, sometimes ranting, sometimes rhetorizing a national catastrophe that the perpetrators threaten will happen again.
The series is more adept at portraying public panic than the personal. We are told Mullen has a personal history with his former chief of staff, Valerie Whitesel (Connie Britton). That doesn’t deter Mullen’s wife Sheila (the wonderfully fiery Joan Allen) from re-employing Valerie, for that is the need of the hour.
Immediacy and imminence are the hallmarks of this racy if somewhat implausible, thriller. The storytelling grabs every potentially explosive moment and gives it the best shot. The series may be short of breath at times, but the characterizations are bang-on even when the absurdities begin to pile up in what seems like an impending collision.
The trick of enjoying Zero Day is to not judge its credibility level but to simply flow in the torrential tides of events. The eight-episode series is deftly assembled and executed with a modicum of finesse. Besides the irreproachable De Niro, the other actors have no walkovers either. Angela Bassett (playing America’s first Black President) is formidable in her own right, and she doesn’t let us forget it. Lizzy Caplan, as De Niro’s doughty but dour daughter, creates her own space in the throbbing O-zone.
The terror attackers (their identity is not a big secret) threaten they will be back. I am in two minds about the same eventuality for the series.
