‘Zero Day’ TV Review: Robert De Niro’s Netflix Political Thriller Fights To Make America Function Again
“When is the last time the country was able to solve any of its problems?” ambitious congresswoman Alexandra Mullen (Lizzy Caplan) screams at her father and former POTUS George Mullen (Robert De Niro) in Netflix’s just-launched Zero Day.
It is a fair question for the six-episode political thriller, and for America 2025.
More from Deadline
Certainly, in a week that has seen a sitting U.S. president parroting Kremlin bullet points while his manic billionaire buddy takes a blowtorch to the federal government, the political thriller created by Eric Newman, Noah Oppenheim and Michael S. Schmidt and starring De Niro, Caplan, Angela Bassett, Joan Allen, Jesse Plemons, Bill Camp, Connie Britton, Dan Stevens, McKinley Belcher III and Matthew Modine, may provide a much needed sugar high of hope — fictional or not. At the same time, ripped right out of the toxic underbelly of modern America as much as the headlines, Zero Day will show it can happen here, non-fiction or not.
Without going into a spoiler-rich chapter and verse of Zero Day, here’s the gist: Out of the chaos of a crippling minute-long cyber attack that exposes the nation’s vulnerabilities and kills more than 3,400, President Evelyn Mitchell (Bassett) tasks revered ex-President Mullen to lead an investigation into what happened, and who was behind it.
That task is strategically easier said than done, with deep divisions in the country, and now the Zero Day Commission having the ability to suspend of the rule of law fuels the already blazing extremists on all sides. Add to that, a cunning House Speaker (Modine), tech overlords, Wall Street power brokers and some White House secrets from Mullen’s single term in office. The show is also full of real-life talking heads including Savannah Guthrie, Wolf Blitzer and Nicolle Wallace, with Fox News and ABC banners popping up frequently to further suspend disbelief at the best and worst times in the Lesli Linka Glatter-directed series.
With all that, Zero Day is at its core not about attacks foreign and domestic. It’s about regrets.
The regrets of a nearly forgotten and sometimes confused old man who reached the height of power, but, like many a Greek myth and Shakespearean tragedy, lost that which was most important to him. The regrets of a nation and a world that is watching in real time as the most powerful nation in history stumbles backwards and downwards. Drawn out over an almost one-month period after the initial attack, the lines between fact and fiction blur pretty fast in Zero Day, just like in our echo chamber America.
Now, for you tea-leaf readers, Zero Day was written and filmed before Kamala Harris ran for President last year and before the Project 2025-juiced Donald Trump was voted back in. For you trivia fans, it’s also De Niro’s first small-screen lead role. Sadly, perhaps much of what the Oscar winner is doing here will be lost in the blowback the unsweetened Trump critic will undoubtedly be subjected to from the MAGA minions and their kingpin in the days to come. Perhaps, but what does De Niro really care? George Mullen is a role the 81-year-old Great American Actor has likely been waiting to play as he goes into the almost sixth decade of his career, and he certainly chews up the screen.
Having said that, while Zero Day is on Netflix, the show is no House of Cards. Yes, Zero Day tries to make your chest rise with patriotic pride at times, and settles a few geopolitical scores, but it’s no West Wing either. There are as many leaps of faith in Zero Day as at an Olympic qualifying meet.
To that, in the short attention span and anecdotal America we live in, just surf the Zero Day wave.
Where you’ll end up at is a very watchable yarn that plays with some big ideas and holds together as a bruised and jaded 21st century version of The American President. In its struggle of the soul, national and personal, with a swig or two of liberal cosplay, Zero Day is maybe even a spiritual sequel to the 1995 Michael Douglas flick. Certainly George Mullen could be Douglas’ Andrew Shepherd 30 years later with a few tweaks here and there and some thick glasses — and that’s just dandy, actually.
Again, not to give anything away among the multitude of twists and turns Zero Day takes, but while De Niro is in almost every scene, damn it is sure great to see Joan Allen back on screen too. Here, as former First Lady and federal bench nominee Sheila Mullen, the three-time Oscar nominee emerges deftly as the series’ secret weapon.
Adding to the fun, where you can get it, is linking sociopathic billionaires and other Zero Day characters to thinly veiled real-life players like former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Elon Musk, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jeffrey Epstein, Matt Walsh, Tucker Carlson, and even Harris or perhaps Michelle Obama, to name a few. If it was a drinking game, you’d be leglessly loaded no more than halfway through the first episode. Being deadly serious as well, if you wondered why ex-POTUSes like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden aren’t showing up for real-life America right now as Trump baits a constitutional crisis like De Niro’s fictional Mullen does in his nation going over the edge – well, join the club.
Maybe, just maybe, Zero Day will inspire them.
As George Mullen says of America in Zero Day, “every time you can do the right thing, it’s another chance to save it.”
Title: Zero Day
Network: Netflix
Premiere date: February 20, 2025 (all episodes)
Co-Creators/Co-Showrunners/Writers/EPs: Eric Newman, Noah Oppenheim
Director/EP: Lesli Linka Glatter
EPs: Eric Newman, Noah Oppenheim, Michael S. Schmidt , Lesli Linka Glatter, Robert De Niro, Jonathan Glickman
Cast: Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, Lizzy Caplan, Connie Britton, Joan Allen, Bill Camp, Dan Stevens, McKinley Belcher III, Matthew Modine, Angela Bassett
Best of Deadline
Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
