It’s not necessary to agree with the politics of a work or its authors to find it entertaining, but in the case of a political thriller, that’s a very tall order. Zero Day, the new Netflix miniseries starring Robert De Niro, is undeniably a page-turner. It’s also a thriller so painstakingly centrist that it makes Aaron Sorkin look like Boots Riley, and for this critic, that’s impossible to look past.
Zero Day’s inciting incident is a genuinely terrifying coordinated cyber attack in which all computer systems, navigation, automated safeguards, power grids, and communications in the United States are sabotaged for exactly 60 seconds, leading to over 3,000 deaths. When power is restored, every screen in the country displays the same ominous threat: “This Will Happen Again.” In response, President Evelyn Mitchell (Angela Bassett) and a scared-stiff Congress pass what is essentially Patriot Act II, suspending Habeas Corpus and establishing a new super-constitutional authority to hunt down those responsible. To head this controversial Zero Day Commission, Mitchell selects former President George Mullen (De Niro), a popular figure from a less divided America. But can even a principled moderate like Mullen be trusted with this much power?
The show’s creators — repeat Netflix producer Eric Newman, former NBC News Director Noah Oppenheim and Pulitzer-winning NYT Washington Correspondent Michael Schmidt — use Zero Day to comment on the hopelessly divided American political landscape from the point of view of an even-tempered man from a more civilized age. We are never told George Mullen’s political affiliation, nor that of any other elected official in the series. Where other works might avoid these specifics so as not to offend viewers on either side of the aisle, here it’s the result of Zero Day’s brutal centrism. In this series, there are only two points of view that matter: There’s the orderly defense of the status quo and there’s everything else, which is all equally bad, regardless of its aims.
Only two characters get to express a specific politic — Mullen’s daughter Alexandra (Lizzy Caplan), a progressive congresswoman, and popular online shock jock Evan Green (dan stevens), a laughable and wholly contradictory attempt to portray an Alex Jones, but from the Left. Green is a grifter who spouts conspiracy theories for cash and clicks, and Congresswoman Mullen is ultimately framed as a naive little girl who should’ve listened to Daddy. It’s telling that Zero Day comes after the left so hard while mentioning right wing extremism only as a way to draw insane equivalencies (white supremacy and “screaming about pronouns” are admonished in the same breath). Ironically, it plays into the common leftist belief that establishment Democrats hate the progressive wing of their own party far more than they fear the fascists across the aisle.
It takes a while for Zero Day’s political myopia to totally overpower the rest of the narrative, which otherwise has a solid setup and some interesting twists. The idea of examining how differently 2020s America would handle a 9/11-scale terrorist attack has a lot of potential, particularly since the scenario denies the US the option of a knee-jerk retaliatory response. A contrast is drawn between the incredible capabilities of modern surveillance and the ease with which electronic evidence can be distorted or manufactured, feeding into a cycle of misinformation. There are intriguing developments in the plot, as President Mullen struggles not only with his incredible responsibility but his own deteriorating mental health.
But at every turn, more of the storytellers’ morally reprehensible Lawful Neutral position rears its head. The most egregious example comes when President Mullen’s investigation hits a snag and a captured Army veteran-turned-hacktivist refuses to name his co-conspirators. Mullen is too principled to use the “enhanced interrogation techniques” afforded to him by the Commission, so he threatens the people the suspect loves, instead. The immigrant who you served with in the Middle East and helped bring to America? He’ll be deported. Your ex-wife? Turns out she’s a heroin addict, so we’ll be putting her away and sending your kid into foster care. That is, unless you spill the beans! This show of strength earns Mullen a “triumphant tough guy” musical sting. The framing of the narrative only turns against Mullen once he authorizes actual bodily torture rather than punishing three people for someone else’s crimes, because only the torture is against the law, while the rest is merely evil.
This is one of the ways in which Zero Day is superficially anti-authoritarian, but only so much as, say, The Dark Knight, a film that decries the surveillance state and then uses its tools to save the day. It goes without saying that no one in Zero Year questions whether torture is an effective means of getting to the truth (it isn’t), only that you shouldn’t do it.
All of these criticisms, clearly painted by my own political biases, might have occupied me less had Zero Day offered me much else to chew on. Visually, it’s as dark, gray, and flat as any other Netflix drama, and despite its all-star cast, none of the performances pop, either. Lizzy Caplan’s is the most memorable, but is undercut by the total collapse of her character in the final episodes. Robert De Niro doesn’t bring any particular life to President Mullen, while Bassett’s President Mitchell feels as if she’s visiting from a broader, more theatrical show. Jesse Plemons, who plays Mullen’s aide and surrogate son Roger, gives what might be the first forgettable performance of his career. But, in truth, if this cast and crew had excelled on a technical level, I might have been even more furious that their talents were employed towards such a dim-witted end.
No doubt the former journalists responsible for this series would maintain — as their protagonist does — that they are on the side of the truth, plain, simple, and objective. But unlike when reporting on real-life events, in fiction the truth is literally what the storyteller decides it is. These storytellers have chosen their truth, and it’s that the problem with America is that we’re so divided — never mind what we’re divided about. If only everything could go back to the way things were in the ‘90s, when there was enough agreement between the two parties over economic and foreign policy that they could fret over sex scandals and matters of honor or decorum. Everyone should just sit back down and focus on what matters — the civil and amicable pursuit of no agenda in particular.
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