Master of Solemnity: Zero Day, a Netflix Mini-Series starring Robert De Niro
- Dr. Lloyd
- Aug 6
- 3 min read
Master of Solemnity
Zero Day
A 5-part Netflix Mini-Series, starring Robert De Niro
Bringing down the US government is nothing short of a mega catastrophe, with little to lighten its delivery and impact. Yet that is the subject of Zero Day, a 5 -part mini-series that brings alive a fictional, deeply troubling near successful effort to do so.
To embody the solemnity and resolve needed to avert a US governmental catastrophe is Robert De Niro, the lead in Zero Day. Philip Roth once remarked, if you want truth, read fiction; and we have here a fictional and credible film that portrays what it might take to create an apocryphal national catastrophe and what it must take to avert that unimaginable catastrophe, akin to a miracle rescue.
No miracle is the handiwork of one man, though it usually takes one man’s (or woman’s) leadership to deliver the requisite mental brains and political brawn to get the job done. Enter Former President George Mullen (De Niro), called back into service by the US President that followed him into Office. Mullen, who seems a broken man, is portrayed with undaunted resolve by an actor for all seasons and array of roles, not muted by his age nor the ongoing acting workload he is maintaining, namely Robert De Niro.
With steely precision and undaunted determination, Mr. De Niro renders the character of a man chosen to save a nation on the precipice of malicious economic failure; to hold the fort together before it succumbs to the rapidly exploding forces of greed and lawlessness underway aimed to destroy our precious and fragile American economy and way of life.
Mr. De Niro carries his role with strained resolve as he is caught betwixt his family and unsavory government officials. His battle is with the evil abounding him and with his own mind, seized by a malware tech device that has electronically burrowed into his brain, distracting it with a variety of psychotic symptoms – not helpful when your work shrieks with peril. With evil challenges outside and inside him, this former President, has been given unprecedented authority to save the United States, thereby making his moves subject to the workings of a man electronically infiltrated while seeking to appear of normal demeanor, which, ironically, he bears a strong liking. Mr. De Niro wears his mantle with the unshaking and pained solemnity of an endangered saint. His crown of thorns is the visible suffering from his mission by those that fear his capacity to save the nation, thereby denying them their malicious goals. Mullen stands virtually alone embattled and worn thin but not stripped of his resolve, role masterfully played because of the power of De Niro’s performance. A De Niro master class.
Netflix’s 5-part Series, Zero Day, quickly places the viewer at the center of its fuming storm and holds us there through its complex, coherent and compelling plot.
No war is won without casualties; hence, we witness the body (and soul) count from averting a US catastrophe. De Niro, center stage, still, never loses his solemnity and determination as he labors to save a flawed government and maintain the identity of our Republic. But he too must bear its inescapable losses.
Zero Day shines a mirror on the chaos of out contemporary society. Where government blisters with its flaws and sits on the edge of an irreversible peril. It’s sadly and fearfully what we see as we look around the globe at the global mess that fills every frame of CNN and every column of the NYT.
Watching this film is as if we have not left home and the news stations fighting for our attention.
Zero Day walks us through one vivid scenario after another of living in today’s world. In so doing, it sharpens our pencils for the looming threats that we face today and well onto tomorrow.
In Zero Day we are left with victory, suffused with its pains and costs. But victory, nevertheless. We gain the opportunity to stay alive for the fights ahead that Zero Day portrays. Yes, a mirror of our lives today and on to many tomorrows. It’s hard to not admonish us all to “buckle our seatbelts” and pray there is no crash landing.
Dr. Sederer is a psychiatrist, public health doctor and non-fiction writer.
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