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Zero movie review: Shah Rukh Khan blasts off into a very strange space

Zero movie review: shah rukh khan is magic in aanand l rai’s film, katrina kaif and anushka sharma are charming. rating: 3.5/5..

Babita Kumari storms out of her bathtub. The movie star is late for a public appearance and has decided to go as is, alarming her handler who frantically interjects, asking about her clothes, hair and makeup. She sticks to her t-shirt and boxer shorts, wears her hair down, and then declares herself so fair she doesn’t need to care about makeup. The heroine is a hot mess, and played as she is by Katrina Kaif, there’s the heft of honesty to the line about her complexion. India would let a fair-skinned girl get away with murder — or at least lipsticklessness. Zero is a film about preconceived notions.

One of Babita’s biggest fans is Bauua Singh, a man from Meerut who showers the movie screen with banknotes and yells, “Bring on all three of your Khans, here I stand meri jaan.” Shah Rukh Khan — one of the three Khans Bauua challenges — plays this coarse and cocksure dwarf, defined by defiance. His outlook is devil-may-care because he believes god has already done his worst.

Watch video review here:

Directed by Aanand L Rai, Zero is for those who don’t fit in. It is a strange film, one that lets Shah Rukh Khan do what he does best — by way of swooning overture — but also a film that takes him where we wouldn’t expect. Zero becomes odder and odder as it goes along, and while the end is impossible to take seriously, the entire film is meant to be a fable. Even in the movies, it is the misfits who stand out.

Like too many of us, Bauua Singh is bred on the movies. When told he isn’t sophisticated, he claims to have watched enough English movies to feign class. In one scene, where Singh is bursting at the seams to break into a dance, he barks for a Shammi or Rishi number, neither of which the DJ has. A ballroom awaits. His entire body wriggles with anticipation, for this Hindi movie man cannot possibly make a grand romantic gesture without song. His final instruction to the DJ is plaintive: play any damn Kapoor song. It’ll work.

And it does.

Anushka Sharma plays a NASA scientist named Aafia Yusufzai Bhinder — in a nod to Malala— and she can’t help marvel at this impudent man. Singh, like Bart Simpson, calls his father by name, and is as rude. Khan, however, renders obnoxiousness loveable, and his character’s biggest win with the scientist may be the lack of pity for her cerebral palsy. To Bauua, she’s a girl who didn’t give him the time of day, which astonishes him, since everyone stares at the dwarf; his own father suggests he be used as a sideshow attraction. To her, he is a massive change from the deference she has earned, and the overcompensating politeness she routinely faces due to her condition. Soon, the lady is drunk on him. Even the name Bauua, from her struggling mouth, sounds like a burp.

There is more to this little man besides insolence. He’s magic. He looks up at the stars and swipes at them dismissively — as if toying with intergalactic Tinder — and as he counts down from 10 to nothing and waves a finger, stationary stars turn into shooting ones. Now this isn’t a trick he can do much with, but it does dazzle his outer space lady who fears what moons this man may shatter if he so casually breaks stars.

The first half of Zero is flat-out fantastic, an unabashed charm-offensive from Rai, Khan and the film’s writer Himanshu Sharma. The dialogues crackle with spontaneity and inventiveness. Bauua Singh is routinely whipped by his father (a superbly grumpy Tigmanshu Dhulia) and when this threat is made with the family lying under the stars, Singh asks ifhis father now wears a belt with his boxers or if he now intends to whip him with the naada, the elastic band holding up the shorts. Sticks and stones don’t hurt this hero, though names go some way in denting him.

It is as the film continues, and gets more fanciful, that the seams start to show. Rai is aiming high with this fable, but gets caught up in issues characteristic of his cinema. The film threatens to become yet another romanticisation of an obsessive hero who refuses to go away, and to take no for an answer. Rai aces the small-town milieu, but as the film outgrows Meerut, its wit dries up while the drama heightens. This is where the film should have embraced the lunacy and gone entirely bonkers. The melodramatic approach robs Zero of its essential lightness, and the metaphor becomes clumsier. Yet there is something fascinating at heart: a woman, tired of a man, literally imposes space on him.

Sharma infuses a sense of pride into her character, a scientist who has given her heart away, and only lets her vulnerability slip out in glances: in the way she looks at Khan when cradling his face, say, or the way she desperately laughs in order to prod happiness out of her distraught father. Her speech patterns are a bit inconsistent, but one can’t doubt Sharma’s commitment to the part. Kaif, meanwhile, plays an intensely self-aware part, that of the lovelorn, cheated-upon superstar, and the actress has infectious amounts of fun giving her vainglorious character a serrated edge.

Shah Rukh Khan measures up. The visual effects lack continuity and he looks more like a dwarf in some scenes than others, his deformity sometimes more pronounced while he looks like a spookily smooth tiny-Khan in other sequences. The actor glosses over this with a dominating performance and tremendous energy. Bauaa Singh is a severely flawed character made irresistible by his pluck, and it’s remarkable how much Khan brings to the part. And he remains the best lover in the business.

Ladies, enforce your knees. He might be wearing an outlandish Dhoom 3 costume, he might have hair like Razzaq Khan, and speak in English so fractured it doesn’t let him lie about his age. Still that Shah Rukh charm is dashed hard to deny, and, as he boasts to his lover in the film, those dimples aren’t store-bought. This is why romantics across the country are safe no matter how limited the DJ’s repertoire. Any Shah Rukh Khan song will do

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Zero Movie Review: Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif Get A For Effort In Outlandish Film

Zero movie review: shah rukh khan cannot be faulted while anushka sharma gets full marks for effort. katrina kaif tries her best..

Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka Sharma, Katrina Kaif, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Abhay Deol, R Madhavan, Sheeba Chaddha, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub

Director: Aanand L Rai

Rating: 2 Stars (out of 5)

Outlandish in more ways than it can possibly orchestrate without going into frequent tailspins, Aanand L Rai's Zero , a superstar vehicle with wildly wobbly wheels, is a monumental mess. The film possesses a certain scale for sure, the visual effects create the desired illusions and an energetic Shah Rukh Khan lends the vertically challenged male lead a degree of charm and chutzpah but it is let down by a hopelessly muddled screenplay.

The unlikely Meerut-to-Mars voyage of the protagonist, Bauua Singh, is undermined by a slew of whimsicalities that defy logic and an uneven tone that borders on the gratuitously facetious. The heavy-handed humour that it generates hinges on the character's lack of inches. Not funny at all. If that isn't sickening enough, the film brings in a woman grappling with limited motor skills for the purpose of mirth and emotional manipulation despite this individual being a person who has discovered water on the surface of the red planet.

Zero is also purported to be a romantic drama about a dwarf seeking his place in the sun and employing means fair and foul to get there but at no point does the often unlikeable man's tribulations strike a genuine chord. Take SRK out of Zero and it would be just big-budget twaddle masquerading as a movie with a difference.

Zero Movie Review: Shah Rukh Khan in a film still. (Image courtesy: YouTube )

The garrulous hero , a man not averse to conflicting impulses by way of a defence mechanism against the constant ridicule he faces on account of his short height, makes up for his perceived inadequacies with an unending torrent of words. He has an avid listener in his best pal Guddu (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub), a man of severely weak eyesight who carries a large torch in order to 'see' things.

Bauua takes on far too many avatars to be convincing. His 'superhuman' qualities do not bestow on him either bionic strength or the zeal of a crime-busting crusader. Instead, they turn the dwarf into a lover, a fanboy, a runaway bridegroom, a dancing champ, a guinea pig for a scientific experiment and an accidental spaceman who stands in for a chimp that plays truant. The character, endowed with the magical ability to literally pluck stars off the sky, is constantly on the move but the film he is supposed to power never reaches the point of propulsion.

Zero opens in Meerut - in the first sequence, the set makes the Uttar Pradesh town look like the Wild, Wild West - where Bauua has repeated run-ins with his exasperated father (Tigmanshu Dhulia) while his mother (Sheeba Chaddha) has a hard time shielding him. The 38-year-old matriculate's repeated attempts through a matchmaker (Brijendra Kala) to find a bride for himself also yields no results. He is at his tether's end.

Bauua's life changes when he chances upon the wheelchair-bound Aafia Yusufzai Bhinder (Anushka Sharma), a brilliant half-Pathan, half-Punjabi space scientist whose ambition is to see India in the forefront of the global mission to send a manned spacecraft to Mars. For him, it is love at first sight - he mistakenly presumes that the amiable Aafia is his equal because she is the first girl he can look her in the eye. For her, his antics are mere temporary diversions. She is only on a brief visit to the land of her birth from the space centre where she works in the US.

Zero Movie Review: Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma in a film still. (Image courtesy: YouTube )

Bauua first humours Aafia by dancing Shashi Kapoor-style to Humko Tumpe Pyaar Aaya (a robust Kalyanji-Anandji composition from Jab Jab Phool Khile , about a humble Kashmir boatman who falls for a rich tourist). Then he gets a full-on love ditty staged in a hotel corridor complete with Holi colours and rain machine-induced showers.

Before the first half draws to a close, Bauua's obsession with a troubled, a hard-drinking movie actress Babita Kumari (Katrina Kaif) leads him astray. A day before his wedding to Aafia, an inebriated Babita, coming off a painful breakup, kisses Bauua smack on his lips for all of three seconds. He turns his back on Aafia and scoots.

Zero Movie Review: Shah Rukh Khan and Katrina Kaif in a film still. (Image courtesy: YouTube )

Post-intermission, Zero flies too high and too helter-skelter to make any real sense at all - you watch with steadily declining interest solely because a superstar is at the heart of the effort. If nothing else, Zero is Bollywood's first film that does not wind up with a desperate race-against-time reunion in a railway station or an airport but on the launchpad of a spacecraft headed for outer space.

If only the film hadn't been so utterly spaced out and the physical disabilities and shortcomings of the two principal characters been treated less cavalierly, Zero might have added up to something more than it eventually does. It yields no percentage because of its unacceptable, insensitive central premise that defines a four feet-something man and a cerebral palsy-afflicted woman primarily in the light of what they lack. Their drawbacks drive the drama but the constant harping on what they aren't at the expense of what they could be can only leave is cringing.

For Bollywood fans, Zero offers a parade of luminaries - Sridevi, Karisma Kapoor, Kajol, Rani Mukerji, Juhi Chawla, Deepika Padukone and Alia Bhatt in a party scene, in which the hero seeks to demonstrate the unique talent for doing a rapid-fire countdown and sending stars streaking across the night sky and Salman Khan along with choreographers Ganesh Acharya and Remo D'Souza in a passage that has Bauua win a dance competition without breaking a sweat.

Zero Movie Review: Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan in a film still. (Image courtesy: Instagram )

Of course, in this latter sequence, we do not see any of the other contestants. Understandable: giving the dance stage to extras would amount to waste of precious footage in a 164-minute film designed for a Bollywood megastar exploring new pastures. After all the film also has to account for Abhay Deol and R Madhavan in walk-on parts.

Shah Rukh cannot be faulted. He gives his hundred per cent to liven up Zero , but for a film running on empty that is only a zero-sum game. Anushka contorts her face and angles her lips to deliver her lines - Full marks to her for effort. Katrina, who inevitably makes her entry with an item number, tries her best to convey the angst of a public figure whose life is a series of mishaps.

Zero , riding on SRK's back, reaches for the stars. But its astral ambitions are thwarted by a lack of imagination and genuine understanding of the minds of people struggling to ward off undeserved ridicule and earn rightful recognition. But whoever expects such niceties from a movie that rarely rises above the level of unalloyed bilge?

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Zero Movie Review

It is not a great film, but certainly worth viewing once

A fantastical film that holds you in fits and starts with its sheer unpredictability, ‘Zero’ has one uncanny scene that may reflect what writer Himanshu Sharma is trying to get at in the movie. The short man, Bauua Singh (Shah Rukh Khan), after successfully taking part in a dance competition, has inveigled himself into a film party. With a striking visage placed delicately on a low body stature, he cuts an amusing figure, and with his entertaining banter about men and women, and about matters romantic, women are comfortable with him. Dressed in a tuxedo and standing on a ledge at the terrace party, he demonstrates the magic trick he is well known for – swiping the night sky with his arm and erasing all the stars from the zodiac.

Watching his show are Hindi film heroines of recent generations – Sridevi (her last film appearance), Kajol, Juhi Chawla, Rani Mukerji, Karishma Kapoor, Deepika Padukone and Alia Bhatt. But somehow, Bauua, who had removed the stars earlier, standing on the terrace of his home at Meerut, is unable to do so in the public view of all these actresses. The stars in the cosmos just keep twinkling away in the sky, while the stars on earth tire of his failed attempts to delete the heavens of their ornaments. The ladies walk away disappointed.

In this sense, ‘Zero’ is a curiously scripted film about the discord between personal identity and photographic image, the conundrum that many public figures live with; some accepting it, and others waging a life long struggle with it. The short man of Meerut is convinced that he is a charming and handsome star, but his mirror reflection shows him a gnome. The astrophysicist with cerebral palsy whom he meets, Aafia (Anushka Sharma), is a woman of outstanding capability who is treated just as Bauua is, a freak of nature to be handled with kid gloves. The public image turns into a distortion of the inner self, and this never seems to change over the years that the individual grows, alters, ages and dies. Both the short man and the woman with the cerebral short circuit, understand each other, and fall in love.

This notion of the fixed mirror image we have of ourselves in the space/ time continuum in which we live, takes us to the second extraordinary scene in ‘Zero’. Sometime later in the film, Aafia is in the US and is working on a space mission to Mars. Suspend for a minute, all disbelief at the absurdity of what follows. Assume, hypothetically, that Bauua has turned up at her space mission to express profound regret for having let her down in the course of their romantic relationship. What takes place then is an argument between the estranged couple, and during the quarrel that ensues, Afia touches a control button in her laboratory that simulates ‘zero gravity’. Instantly, they both float towards the ceiling and quarrel like ‘normal’ people. For Bauua, height is immaterial without gravity, and, in fact, shortness may actually be a levered advantage in this simulated alteration of the laws of physics. For Afia, she is temporarily free of the wheelchair that she has been bound to all her life. Now, with their respective challenges non existent, they are equal before each other and the physical universe.

‘Zero’ is a clever movie that uses abstract metaphors. But it also sometimes just plays with the ordinary supposition that the character in a film could be interchangeable with the actor who plays him or her. Now the cause of the temporary estrangement between Bauua and Afia has been the beautiful singer and film actress, Babita Kumari (Katrina Kaif), who the short man is enchanted by. She is an intelligent woman, conscious of the difference between stardom and her own identity, and has been dumped by her lover (Abhay Deol). She is now an alcoholic. Without doubt Babita Kumari is a not so veiled reference to the fine actress of the 1950s and early ‘60s, Meena Kumari. Bouts of drinking had cut short her glittering career and eventually caused her death at the age of 38.

In a drunk conversation with Bauua in a car, Babita tells him her family history, dramatising it to the point of making it nonsensical. Oddly enough, the personal history she speaks of seems very close to that of Katrina Kaif’s own mixed heritage and her inter-continental arrival as an actress in Hindi cinema. What ‘Zero’ is speaking of, with movie stars and their lives scattered across the fanciful extravaganza of its mounting and its plot, is the conundrum of stardom.

Being perceived as not who you actually are is a conditional status of the actor in Hindi cinema, and the actor may struggle to live with it, particularly when his or her career is over. This is a fair enough position. But the writer of this movie strays, by extending the same idea to people who are physically challenged, and who have serious psychological conflicts within their own perceived identity. While interesting as an abstract question, this comparative analogy raises ethical questions. Is Stephen Hawking’s lifelong restriction to a wheelchair comparable to the suffering of a celebrity like Michael Jackson who developed, what could be called, a terminal image impasse?

On the level of cinematic realism, the plot of ‘Zero’ is plainly batshit crazy. But the film has an enthralling visual display, has a few short and gripping star turns, and throws up some fascinating analogues. It is not a great film, but certainly worth viewing once.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Zero’ On Netflix, Where An Italian Teen Uses His Power To Disappear To Help His Neighborhood

Where to stream:.

• Zero (2021)
• Stream It Or Skip It

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One of the things we’ve been enjoying about some of the European productions that have come to streaming services of late is that they represent the diversity of the countries they represent. These are populations that have been in their respective countries for decades, but most programming coming out of European nations either ignores them or uses people from those populations as minor characters. Zero is one of the first Italian shows that puts the country’s Black population front and center. Read on for more.

ZERO : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In the reflection of a puddle, we see a teen running, with another teen going after him with a gun, calling him an “asshole,” among other things. The teen says in voice over, “Until a few days ago, I was like the Invisible Man. Nobody noticed me until… they arrived.”

The Gist: Omar (Giuseppe Dave Seke) lives in a neighborhood in Milan called Barrio; it has mostly an immigrant population, and as he says in voice over, it’s largely considered invisible by the city’s population. When he was young, he was given a bracelet by his mother when he was a kid, but his mother is no longer around; he misses her, but gets creeped out when he sees a painting of her in their apartment. A photo of her playing basketball wearing the number 0 is how he likes to remember her.

He lives with his father and sister Awa (Virginia Diop); their building is going to be redeveloped and they potentially will get kicked out. Omar is doing what he can, working jobs like delivering pizzas, though he wants to move to Belgium and pursue a career in art, drawing manga with Black characters like his hero Zero.

On one delivery, he gets locked in a penthouse apartment as the couple in it have a breakup argument. Sometime later, out comes Anna (Beatrice Grannò); the two of them connect by the indoor pool (!) about doing what they want to do and not what others want them to do. She wants to be an architect, for instance.

She also tells him about the “broken windows” theory of how neighborhoods go downhill; it sticks in his head when he sees yet another scooter on fire in the Barrio. As he tries to put it out, a guy named Sharif (Haroun Fall) starts chasing him with a gun, thinking he set the scooter on fire. Omar is trapped in an abandoned warehouse, then he grabs his mother’s bracelet and disappears.

Sharif comes and sees Omar at the pizzeria the next day, fascinated with Omar’s disappearing powers. He thinks they can do a lot of good in the Barrio with Omar’s abilities. After Sharif leaves, the pizzeria gets a call from Anna, who wants to invite Omar to dinner that night.

Omar goes to her apartment and finds that it’s her birthday party; but Anna finds her and they connect once again. But when he realizes he dropped his mother’s bracelet, he runs to where he lost it; but Sharif has gotten there first, and sees Omar’s disappearing powers firsthand.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Zero is sort of like  Heroes , if only one person had powers… and it took place in Italy.

Our Take: Zero  is not only a sci fi drama that has a comic artist as its hero, it’s created by a comic artist, as well. Roberto Marchionni, known by his pen name Menotti, is the show’s creator, and it’s fun to see that Omar is not only talented but wants to make manga featuring Black heroes his career. The idea is that, due to his powers, he and his manga character Zero will sort of become one and the same.

Seke embodies Omar’s determination and resilience very well; the fact that he isn’t intimidated by Anna’s wealth or status and immediately gets to know her as a person is believable because of the warmth Seke brings to the role. We don’t have a complete picture of Sharif, but we liked what we saw from Fall; he’s not playing Sharif as a thug, more as a guy who knows an opportunity when he sees it.

But what really got us intrigued by  Zero is that it’s being matter-of-fact about the fact that its hero and a lot of its cast are Black, which is a big deal for an Italian show. Not many Italian scripted series, at least the ones that have crossed the Atlantic to the U.S., have featured a Black star, much less a mostly Black cast. It’s an acknowledgement that, like many European countries, Italy’s population has become much more diverse over the past few decades, and the children of these immigrants, as Italian as anyone else, are an integral part of the country’s future. A growing population segment of the country is being represented with stories that put them in the forefront, and that’s a great thing.

Because Omar is going to use his powers to help protect the Barrio neighborhood, it seems that  Zero will explore issues the immigrant population in Italy face every day, from crime to the wealthy white people either finding them invisible or thinking of things like the “broken windows theory” that are essentially telling these people that their problems are their fault. The show has drama and emotion, but still tries to keep things on a medium-high tension level, which should make some of the more issue-oriented aspects go down more easily.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Sharif sees Omar disappear and reappear as he tries to get back his mother’s bracelet, and he smiles at the possibilities.

Sleeper Star: Virginia Diop is fun as Awa, who gives Omar the usual little sister business, but also cries on his shoulder at the prospect of having to move out of the neighborhood and start over if they can’t make rent.

Most Pilot-y Line: At what point was Sharif going to tell Omar that the gun wasn’t loaded? He didn’t even mention it when he went to the pizzeria to see him the next day.

Our Call: STREAM IT.  Zero is a fun superhero show that’s not only grounded in real life, but explores a population that hasn’t been represented in Italian shows to this point.

Should you stream or skip the Italian series #Zero on @netflix ? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) April 22, 2021

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream  Zero  On Netflix

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Srk’s ‘zero’ lands nowhere with its shoddy script, the second half of ‘zero’ made us feel stupid for even hoping that this movie could be anything other than its title.

Camera: Shiv Kumar Maurya

Video Editor: Kunal Mehra

Video Producer: Chandni Sharma

SRK and his die-hard fans all are wishing for one more Chak De India and understandably so. His last few films haven’t exactly been flawless, and so, the wait is on for that one film with that one role that will make SRK invincible again. Sorry to break it to you, but Zero isn’t that movie.

Zero ’s hero is a dwarf, adtees saal ka ‘ launda ’ who is seeking a bride. Bauua is self-aware, and repeatedly mentions how the world makes fun of people like him and think they belong only in a circus. But his give-a-damn attitude and the extra swagger he adds to his walk to keep duniya and his own dad’s misgivings about him at bay wins us over. When Bauua starts hanging out with a NASA scientist in a wheelchair, who suffers from cerebral palsy, we surely get excited, looking forward to how this pans out.

Bauua’s object of desire, however, is top actor Babita Kumari, aka Katrina Kaif; who, I daresay, is playing herself. She is even nursing a broken heart, courtesy a fellow actor named Kapoor. Go figure!

Now, here are three characters, all judged by society on the basis of their physical appearance. And so, we feel a little hopeful about the proceedings. The premise definitely seems promising as an honest and refreshing examination of relationships.

The second half, however, made us feel stupid for even hoping that Zero could be anything other than its title.

What writer Himanshu Sharma and director Anand L Rai give us is a confused, shoddy story that just doesn’t know what to do with its three principle characters or where to take them.

From Meerut ki galiyaan to glitzy award functions to outer space, Zero is a disastrous ride that crash lands in the middle of nowhere. This is no Chakh De! but rather, ‘chuck it’!

It’s not that the performances are bad. In fact, SRK gives it his all and Katrina Kaif doesn’t hold back either. However, we are forced to suspend our disbelief and surrender to the contrived plot which has everything from a dance competition to a space adventure-ready chimpanzee. The set-up is too huge and the pleasures dwindle too soon.

It’s 1 Quint out of 5 for this lost ride!

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Topics:    anushka sharma      shah rukh khan      katrina kaif  .

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Season 1 – ZeroZeroZero

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Zero movie review: Shah Rukh Khan's comic timing is the only thing going for this spluttering, tottering affair

Shah Rukh Khan delivers an endearing performance as Bauua Singh but Zero’s storyline is convoluted, confused and dull.

Language: Hindi

Aanand L. Rai’s Zero is divided into two distinct compartments: one where the screenplay allows leading man Shah Rukh Khan’s naturally energetic personality, comic timing and charm to take flight, and the second in which the film appears to be trying to say something very grave and very deep but fails to lift off. Thank the cosmos for Bollywood’s dimpled wonder, his charisma and enthusiasm undiminished by his 53 years, because without him, Zero has little going for it.

The story takes off in Meerut where a 38-year-old (ahem!) scamp called Bauua Singh has forever been taunted for his physical disability. Bauua (SRK) is of very short stature, but does not allow social opprobrium to dampen his zest for life, his self esteem or his oversized ego. He is keen on marriage and obsessed with the movie star Babita Kumari (Katrina Kaif). In pursuit of a potential spouse, he avails of the services of a marriage broker (Brijendra Kala). In pursuit of his screen idol - “bhabhi (sister in law),” as his friend Guddu refers to Babita - he enters a contest, the prize for which is a chance to attend a party with her.

Somewhere between long-distance trysts with the Bollywood beauty in movie theatres and at fan gatherings, meetings with his broker and fights with his father (Tigmanshu Dhulia), Bauua encounters the genius space scientist Aafia Yusufzai Bhinder (Anushka Sharma). Cerebral palsy is not mentioned by name in the film but her constrained facial expressions, speech and physical movements tell their own tale. The wheelchair is to the brilliant Aafia what height is to Bauua - she has not let it clip her wings.

Zero is the latest collaboration between director Aanand L. Rai and writer Himanshu Sharma who have caused box-office storms so far with Tanu Weds Manu (2011), Raanjhanaa (2013) and Tanu Weds Manu Return s (2015). Two things have characterised these hits: their misogyny and their connect with small-town India. Unlike Kanpur or Varanasi in those previous projects, Zero ’s screenplay does not quite capture the specific fragrance and feel of Meerut. On the plus side, Zero does not hate women - the downer is that it simply does not know what to do with them.

One thing this film does get right is its hero’s frenetic energy and acerbic humour for which Khan proves to be an excellent fit. Sharma, wisely, does not scrub insensitive language out of the film in the interests of superficial - and unreal - political correctness. Life is not a movie review where a critic spends hours trying to figure out whether “dwarf”, “midget” or “vertically challenged person” would be the most appropriate usage, and Sharma understands that. Characters around Bauua in his home town hurl the Hindi word “bauna” (dwarf) at him and define him almost entirely by his height without a care for his feelings, as most people in the real world sadly would. Crucially though, the writer and director themselves do not view him through a condescending or contemptuous lens. Bauua gives as good as he gets, piercing through the barbs with a tongue that is sharper than a butcher’s knife and a skin that is thicker than rhinoceros hide.

Beyond this though, Zero has nothing to offer. Part of the reason seems to be Sharma’s inability to write relatable women who are neither ridiculously eccentric, brusque and self-centred like Tanu nor selfish and manipulative like Zoya in Raanjhanaa . Remove from the picture the animosity towards womankind that oozed out of Raanjhanaa and the othering in the Tanu Weds Manu films, and what you have are the dead bores Aafia and Babita.

Babita gets one interesting scene in which she tells Bauua about her parents. Aafia does not even get that. No doubt Bauua is funny and feisty, but he is also a big jerk with her every step of the way, making it impossible to understand why she falls for him because the mere fact that he is the only man she has met who is at eye level with her is hardly an explanation, although that is what their conversations imply.

Their separate journeys with Bauua are so terribly contrived and intellectually pretentious that I found myself longing for them to exit the frame each time they were there, and to leave him alone with Guddu so that we might enjoy the crackling banter between the two men.

Zero is, no doubt, attempting to make a profoundly philosophical point at the intersection of the protagonists’ physical disabilities and their joint exploration of the universe, but whatever it is is lost in the swirling mists of the writer’s mind.

One point that does come across is the unspoken intermingling of communities evident in Aafia’s name and her parents’ relationship. Subtlety so relevant in these politically divisive times rears its head elsewhere too — this time with clever comicality — in the matter of marginalised communities within dominant groups (Bauua is male and visibly upper caste, but that does not save him from incessant denigration due to his appearance).

Thankfully, Bollywood has progressed beyond the days when Anupam Kher had to go down on his knees to play a dwarf in Shirish Kunder’s Jaan-E-Mann (2006). Bauua’s small size has been achieved reportedly with the same technology as has been used in the Lord of the Rings films and The Hobbit . Some day soon, hopefully the industry will get to a place where it does not need such tech because it has place for actors like the great Peter Dinklage who plays Tyrion Lannister in the Game of Thrones series. For the moment though, it is worth celebrating that a mainstream actor, writer and director in this dismally conservative, ableist industry came up with a film that revolves entirely around a vertically challenged man.

That, of course, is not enough. Zero ’s storyline is convoluted, confused and dull. Of the female leads, Kaif’s primary job is to look stunning, a duty she fulfills to perfection, while the heavy lifting in terms of acting is left, quite sensibly, to the more talented artiste of the two. Though Sharma totally immerses herself in Aafia’s physicality, there is little she can do to elevate the woman above the dreary writing.

Khan delivers an endearing performance as Bauua, but has more chemistry with Guddu (played by the unfailingly remarkable Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) than with either lady. The superstar has been in experimental mode for the past three years with films like Fan , Raees and Dear Zindagi that have offered him a chance to explore the actor in him. Those films, flawed though they were, were far, far, far better written than Zero.

Even Ajay-Atul’s music for Zero is limited. The wistful melody and rousing orchestration of ‘ Mere Naam Tu’ comes in one of its most visually appealing scenes. ‘ Issaqbaazi’ - featuring Salman Khan in a neatly conceptualised cameo - is lively but lacks depth. And ‘ Husn Parcham’ is a big yawn.

Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of Zero is Khan’s willingness to laugh at himself along with Messrs Sharma and Rai. In one scene when asked how old he is, Bauua slips up and gives a figure other than 38. The fact that the character is lying about his age serves as an amusing swipe at a superstar who by and large persists in playing characters much younger than he is and/or starring opposite much younger women. Of course the point would have been more effective and would have come across as more sincere if the leading ladies of Zero weren’t 20 years junior to Khan.

In a sense, Aanand L. Rai’s career path in 2018 serves as a metaphor for Bollywood in a year in which this male-star-struck industry has repeatedly struck gold - qualitatively and financially - largely with films it conventionally considers “small” such as Stree , Raazi, Badhaai Ho and Veere Di Wedding , while hyped-up ventures headlined by major gentleman superstars have too often turned out to be damp squibs. As a producer, Rai threw his weight behind the starless fantasy/thriller Tumbbad which released a few months back and has proved to be a pathbreaker with its solid and adventurous writing that earned it glowing reviews and a welcoming audience. Whether or not Zero rakes in big bucks at the box office, it is a spluttering, tottering affair.

If and when you do your next Zero , Mr Rai, do put the screenplay through the same arduous pressure test to which you would subject Tumbbad . Better still, give us more _Tumbbad_s please.

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ZeroZeroZero Review: It's a family thing

Amazon's epic tale of how 5,000 kilos of cocaine affect far more than the buyers, sellers and brokers..

What to Watch Verdict

At the end of the eight hours of ZeroZeroZero you'll have to ask yourself — is this sort of thing *really* going on around us all the time?

A gripping story that's at times hard to watch.

The locations are epic.

So is the acting of everyone on screen.

The Mogwai soundtrack is perfect.

Sometimes the brutality is just a little too much.

Fair warning: You're going to want to set aide the better part of a day or two for ZeroZeroZero . This is one of those series where the story is told so damn well — and the episodes themselves are so masterfully pieced together — that you just have to keep going. No matter how brutal things get. No matter how bleak it may seem. If the characters somehow soldier on, so, too, must you.

The premise of ZeroZeroZero is simple. The head of an Italian Mafia family has been living in exile for years. He wants to get out of his hole in the ground and regain his former stature by getting 5,000 kilograms (that's about five tons ) of cocaine into the system. That sort of buy requires a lot of capital, though, so he gets others to invest in the purchase. Like it was a sports team or something. The coke comes from a pair of brothers in Mexico. The two ends work through a family's shipping company out of New Orleans.

Buyers. Sellers. Brokers. The triad that makes up a major international, wholesale drug operation.

The series is based on the 2016 book by Roberto Saviano and was developed for Italian and French TV, plus Amazon. The result is eight gripping hours spanning three continents, countless deaths, double- and triple-crosses, and an unyielding need to get the deals done.

Watch the fantastic series ZeroZeroZero on Amazon Prime Video.

ZeroZeroZero — it gets its name from the purest form of Italian pasta flour, and slang for pure cocaine — is told from three points of view. There's the Italian crime family in Calabria, in Southern Italy. They're the ones buying the cocaine. There's the Mexican side of things, which is mostly about the specially trained soldiers who are tasked to combat the drug trade — but it's also about the Leyra brothers, who head up the cartel producing the drugs. And there are the Americans — the Lynwood family — who run a shipping business out of New Orleans that facilitates the movement of mass amounts of cocaine.

The brutality is just part of doing business.

Each episode does a masterful job of hooking you, and I didn't even pick up on it until I was a few hours in. We start with the elderly Don Minu (Adriano Chiaramida) meeting with other families and guaranteeing a major shipment of cocaine that will bring everyone a lot of money, and allow him to come out of hiding for the first time in years following a protracted mafia war. Don Minu's grandson, Stefano (Giuseppe De Domenico), is in the mix, but he's in it for revenge — Don Minu years ago killed his own son, Stefano's father, to stop the war. (Though we don't learn that reasoning until later in the series.)

Then we see the Mexican special forces surveilling a meeting between the Leyra brothers and Edward and Emma Lynwood (Andrea Riseborough, who you know from Birdman and Oblivion with Tom Cruise). They're the father and daughter with the shipping business who will make sure the cocaine (which is hidden at the bottom of cans of jalapeño peppers) makes it from Monterey to Gioia Tauro in Southern Italy, three weeks and 6,000 miles away. As the soldiers are about to close in on the kingpins, one of them quietly alerts someone on the Leyra's payroll. The dinner breaks up and the shooting begins. The Leyras and the Lynnwoods escape, but not before Edward Lynwood (Gabrielle Byrne) takes a round in the chest.

That's when time slows down, and we flash back — rewind, really —  to get the whole storm on what's actually happening. It's a simple, subtle trick (and certainly not a unique one), but it's an effective device. You're roped in. Something bad is going to happen, and now you want to see what it is.

The Italian side is the trickiest of the three to follow. First Stefano wants to stop the shipment from ever making it to Italy, ensuring that his grandfather is disgraced once more an his new business partners will turn on him. (And in this world, that can mean waking up to find yourself being eaten alive by starving hogs.) Stefano is strong. He's clever. But maybe a little too clever and not experienced enough. He's working with the rival Curtiga family but quickly finds enemies on all sides. Don Minu is old but not naive. He sees what's coming and forces Stefano back to his family's side — at least until the Curtigas make it plenty clear that either the shipment does not make it to Italy, or Stefano will have to kill Don Minu himself. There's a lot of back-and-forth here, and a few too many characters to follow things easily (plus it's all in Italian). But it's intriguing as hell. Who's going to come out on top? Or at least lose less?

The Mexican side is brutal. No two ways about it. Manuel Contreras (Harold Torres) leads the squad of special forces. They hunt down and kidnap one of the Leyra's men and throw him in a hole for some good, old-fashioned shock-torture. But instead of hearing the screams, Manuel puts in his earbuds and takes in the teachings of an extremely religious podcast. It's maybe not his happy place, but he's doing evil in God's name, and this is how he copes. Ultimately they get the location of the dinner, where things start going down.

The ship full of cocaine leaves for Italy, and Manuel and his team are tasked with boarding it off the coast and stopping the drugs. There he finds Chris Lynnwood (Dane DeHaan), Emma's brother who's been kept out of the family business due to Huntington's Disease, which killed their mother and has secretly started to show in him. Chris stepped up, though, because his father ultimately died from the stress and shock of the attack at dinner, and someone has to make sure the shipment makes it to Italy. And Chris grew up on the large container ships, so he's suited for what's about to happen.

The Mexican commandos fastrope down to the ship, knock out Chris and warn the captain — a longtime friend of the Lynnwoods — that they need to shut down all tracking and disappear as they cross the Atlantic if they want to make it.

One problem with that, though: Stefano paid the captain 1 million Euro to make sure the shipment doesn't make it to Italy. How do you do that? Force an engine fire and abandon ship after knocking out Chris again. Except Chris knows these ships, remember? And he's somehow able to put out the engine fire himself and signal for help, ultimately ending up in Senegal, along with his wrecked ship and $60 million worth of cocaine hidden in the jalapeños. Emma flies in and they make their way across the Sarahah to Casablanca, getting caught up with ISIS along the way.

Meanwhile, Manuel and his crew — after killing their captain and saying to hell with the Mexican Army and getting some serious religious direction — decide to become the Leyras' dedicated paramilitary group. (They don't really give the brothers a choice in the matter.) They're ruthless and brutal. Mass executions to make a point seem routine. They recruit dozens of young men and train them as they were trained. (Maybe not as well, but well enough to be effective.)

But as is the case any number of times in ZeroZeroZero , strength isn't a one-way thing. Who has the upper hand at any given time depends on who's willing to go further. Who's able to see what's coming, or who's able to react the quickest. Who's willing to do whatever they have to do to ensure what needs to be done is done. And that's what's so incredible about the final scene of the series.

Manuel in one chair, a bloodbath left in his wake. Emma sits across from him, sandwiched between two bodies. If she blinked during the meeting — or as she twice walked through the courtyard strewn with bodies of men, women and children — I didn't see it. She simply completely the transaction, prepared for the next one, and went on her way.

The brutality — the death and destruction and transnational fuckery — is just part of doing business. It is the business. And for the three groups in ZeroZeroZero — the buyers, the sellers and the brokers — all that carnage is just a family thing.

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Zero Movie Review: Shah Rukh Khan's Zero has several factors going for it but sadly, the weak, flawed and lacklustre screenwriting is all that you recall. This one’s an epic disappointment.

Zero review 1.5/5 & rating. watch zero official trailer video, listen songs, movie news updates, movie review and checkout public movie reviews soon., zero review {1.5/5} & review rating.

ZERO is a crucial film for varied reasons. The main reason being, it’s the first collaboration of Shah Rukh Khan and Aanand L Rai, who has a hat trick of hits to his credit [TANU WEDS MANU, RAANJHANAA and TANU WEDS MANU RETURNS].

Unlike their previous ventures, the stakes are high this time. The actor features in a role he hasn’t portrayed earlier, while a significant part of the second half has space travel interwoven in its screenplay. Naturally, the expectations are colossal.

Without giving away the minutest details of the story, here’s the spoiler-free plot: Bauua [Shah Rukh], a 38-year-old man, lives with his family in Meerut. He comes across the profile of Aafia [Anushka Sharma] at a marriage bureau and decides to woo her.

Aafia doesn’t show interest in Bauua initially, but falls in love with him subsequently. Bauua backs off. A few months later, Bauua is shocked to see Aafia at his residence.

Bauua’s father [Tigmanshu Dhulia] decides to get Bauua and Aafia married and a reluctant Bauua agrees too. Meanwhile, Bauua had signed up for a dance competition where the winner will get to meet the superstar, Babita [Katrina Kaif].

An ardent fan of Babita, Bauua ditches Aafia on the day of marriage. What happens next, forms the remainder of the film.

To begin with, the story [Himanshu Sharma] hinges on a wafer thin plot. The writer has integrated space travel in the narrative and you may argue [and rightly so] that it’s this aspect that drives the story away from predictability. However, the writer fails to knit a compelling, riveting and captivating screenplay that stays with you.

ZERO appeals in bits and spurts and a few moments in the first half do grab your attention, make you giggle and bring a smile on your face. A few individualistic sequences do catch your attention, but you realise, as the narrative progresses, there’s something amiss.

You invest hopes in the post intermission portions, hoping that the writing and the emotional quotient - the hallmark of Aanand’s previous movies - will change the scenario for better. Unfortunately, the writing goes for a toss as the fun portions fall flat, romance seems superficial and emotions appear fake.

What saves ZERO, besides the performances of its principal cast, are some sharp and witty lines. But the bitter truth is, great lines or individualistic sequences in a disjointed screenplay are forgotten once you exit the theatre.

Aanand L. Rai’s direction is a far cry from his previous works. In fact, the incredibly talented storyteller is known to make you smile, laugh and make you moist-eyed in his well-packaged movies. Everyone who recalls his works will be wondering, how did he okay a half-baked screenplay this time? Too many questions cross your mind as the drama unfolds and you soon realise, it’s a screenplay of convenience.

The graph of the film goes haywire in the second hour. Generally, you don’t complain about the length of the film / run time if the proceedings and sequence of events keep you hooked, enthralled and mesmerised. Sadly, ZERO lacks the power of a strong and cohesive script.

Ajay-Atul's soundtrack is a big plus. ‘Mere Naam Tu' is, undoubtedly, the best track. The song featuring Salman and SRK is a treat for the fans of the two superstars. Cinematography is brilliant. The DOP captures the various moods and locales to perfection. The production design is top notch. A special mention of the VFX, which matches the global standards.

Shah Rukh is the lifeline of ZERO. He is in supreme form. The actor deserves 10/10 for a performance that’s absolutely fantastic. Anushka nails the part. There’s no doubt that she’s amongst the best and her act in ZERO reiterates the fact. Katrina surprises you with a stunning performance. Some moments in the second half give her ample scope to shine.

Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub is dependable, contributing to the fun quotient. Tigmanshu Dhulia is perfect. Brijendra Kala is hardly there. Abhay Deol and R Madhavan hardly contribute.

ZERO features Sridevi, Kajol, Rani Mukerji, Alia Bhatt, Deepika Padukone, Karisma Kapoor and Juhi Chawla in an inconsequential sequence.

On the whole, ZERO has several factors going for it: star presence, winsome performances, energetic soundtrack and of course, it’s timed during the Christmas and New Year vacations. Sadly, the weak, flawed and lacklustre screenwriting is all that you recall after you’ve watched the much-awaited movie. This one’s an epic disappointment!

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Katrina Kaif reveals that she was dying to play Anushka Sharma's part in Zero: "My audition for the role of Afiya moved Aanand L Rai; Shah Rukh Khan advised that I should trust him"

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Zenless Zone Zero review

A charming cast can't hide zenless zone zero's true intentions., our verdict.

ZZZ is a shallow, polished front for a relentless online store.

PC Gamer's got your back Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware.

Zenless Zone Zero adopts a zesty Hi-Fi Rush/Jet Set Radio Future style of neon-accented sci-fi urbanism. This is a place where skateboards are a decorative item, born-to-become-merch bunny-robot mascots wander the streets, and lots of dialogue is delivered via DM. It's all a stylishly meaningless pushback on glossy businesses with political power: The graffiti is superficially artistic but has nothing to say, and the gigantic tech company sets up shop and then gives out neat trinkets. Corporate military-like officers might be quite nice and helpful, actually.

Zenless Zone Zero is a reskinned revenue stream designed to target a similar-but-different audience to MiHoYo's other unstoppable gacha-style games Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail . It's been created to capture a gap in the market. 

I'm not surprised. Gacha games like this are by design wallet-opening merch machines in disguise. The aim is to get me coming back every day to do a few things that make me feel good enough to consider using the shop, and to like the characters enough to be interested in any TV shows, albums, and action figures that might show up along the way. But because this will be for many of us our second or third experience of this too-familiar hamster wheel of #content from the same company, it rings hollow. Zenless Zone Zero is raw marketing in game form, everything designed around trends, targets, and demographics. 

Every character worth talking to runs or frequents a trendy shop, and they're all too cool to conform to the whims of this vague shiny dystopia's towering megacorps trying to grind ordinary people down. The playable cast cover a wide range of appealing (and tropey) personality types and visual preferences, from cold and calculating to loud, impeccably polite to shy. You like shark girls? There's a shark girl. Prefer broad-shouldered furries? Then enjoy the overall-wearing bear-man. Need a younger guy with model-perfect abs? Don't we all.

It's all bright and colourful and very carefully designed to not look like it's trying to do anything other than be a fun new game. The bear is sweet as heck, the Deadpool-like Billy can't go five seconds without quipping, and all of the cool ladies with swords are exactly as cool as ladies with swords should be. Even my own in-game cypher (male or female) is an interesting person to spend time with, their personality fleshed out enough to allow for some light-hearted teasing of their family and friends, without ever feeling like they're out of my control.

And I did have fun for the first few hours. It's hard not to when a game's trying this hard to charm—even though ZZZ spent a lot of it constantly jangling its keys at me and trying to insist another new slight remix of "hitting things" or "talking to people" was a completely new way to play.

There's an endless parade of missions to tackle, usually beginning with some abstracted, almost roguelike, exploration. These segments represent the surrounding "dungeon" area as a lively maze of CRT TV screens where dangerous monsters may give turn-by-turn chase across a grid of monitors, switches need weighing down with heavy boxes pushed in from elsewhere, and mid-mission twists can drastically change the routes available to me. At one point I even had to play a bit of bootleg Bomberman. I always felt like these sections tried their best, and although I was never excited by them, I did want to see what inventive new take on this minimalist sort of gaming they'd come up with next.

This is in sharp contrast with the active combat that often followed. For a few bouts it did a good job of making my chosen team's swinging and shooting within a string of small, flat arenas look exciting and kinetic. I dodged lasers, and whenever I hit something numbers popped out, just like a modern action RPG demands. Every major blow and final victory triggered vivid fighting game style fullscreen effects and dramatic camera angles, as if I was participating in an intense battle.

But it soon became clear that there was no rhythm or timing to it, and before long I got tired of the sound of my own mindless mouse clicking. No matter who I was playing as or what I was up against, fights always ended up playing out the same way. An endless routine of left clicking as rote combos went through the motions, with a quick prod of the switch, assist, or skill buttons whenever I was told to. Fighting something the size of a house shouldn't feel boring, but it did here—another task ticked off a neverending list of virtual chores.

I wouldn't have minded so much if this work hadn't kept dragging me away from the things I actually wanted to do for another round of filler. The mandatory side story I had to play through was effectively little more than advertising another way to spend time on ZZZ's treadmill, neither going anywhere nor directly relevant to the scenario I was actually trying very hard to get back to. Just as the next plot twist came into view I'd abruptly be told no, I must be this level to continue, with no choice but to grind it out or keep logging in long enough for my daily bonuses to add up. Inescapable tutorial were still popping up days after I'd started teaching me how to make a fresh batch of numbers go higher than before.

These "helpful" explanations usually accompanied another new category in the cash shop expertly calibrated to lightly confuse with its mix of multiple imaginary currencies, other imaginary currencies that must be bought with real-world currencies, and plain old straight-from-my-bank-account purchases too.

Of course I don't have to buy anything. I could play the game free, forever. But there's no doubt everything would be much easier, and I'd have a better chance of getting that character I'd seen advertised, if I made a few purchases. Just one. Or perhaps two. The cheaper bundle pack, maybe? How about the £4.99 monthly subscription instead? Or why not unlock the full benefits of the season pass for a currently discounted £19.99 (a £9.99 tier is also available) and get more ability-enhancing materials that way?

Sorry, or ? ZZZ means and . 

More than anything, it makes me sad. The more I play it, the more obvious it is that not only is this not a good action RPG, but it also has no real interest in being one either. What ZZZ actually wants is to be my new forever game, the only thing I think of when I find the time to do some dailies. It will encourage me to have just one more go, to come back for just one more day, all so it can extract as much money out of me as possible and then smile politely as it asks for more. 

It may be free to play, but I can't afford to let ZZZ have its own way.

When baby Kerry was brought home from the hospital her hand was placed on the space bar of the family Atari 400, a small act of parental nerdery that has snowballed into a lifelong passion for gaming and the sort of freelance job her school careers advisor told her she couldn't do. She's now PC Gamer's word game expert, taking on the daily Wordle puzzle to give readers a hint each and every day. Her Wordle streak is truly mighty.

Somehow Kerry managed to get away with writing regular features on  old Japanese PC games , telling today's PC gamers about some of the most fascinating and influential games of the '80s and '90s.

The best Zhu Yuan build in Zenless Zone Zero

50 million downloads in less than a week: Zenless Zone Zero, MiHoYo's action-RPG gacha, is (unsurprisingly) popular

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Zenless Zone Zero review: Hoyoverse’s most approachable game yet

Great combat and one hell of a soundtrack.

TechRadar Verdict

Zenless Zone Zero is a great free-to-play title made with Hoyoverse’s exquisite presentation and attention to detail. While the early game’s story is slow going and the usual free-to-play progression blocks can be irksome, what’s here in Version 1.0 is an excellent springboard for future content.

Jaw-dropping presentation, animation, and music

Simple yet slick combat

Progression and character building are easy to parse

Hollow Zero mode is very compelling

Performance issues plague the PS5 version

Limited energy system can lead to progression roadblocks

Early story isn’t particularly engaging

Surprisingly small roster at launch

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Platform reviewed: PC, PS5 Available on: PC, PS5, Android, iOS Release date: July 4, 2024 (Version 1.0) 

Following the major success of Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, developer Hoyoverse is back with its latest free-to-play title: Zenless Zone Zero . This game differs from both of the above with its relatively modern setting and focus on fast-paced real-time combat as opposed to Genshin ’s open-world exploration or Honkai ’s intricate turn-based team building.

In terms of format, Zenless Zone Zero feels like a more traditionally built mobile game, with smaller hub areas and simple yet flashy combat. For many, it’ll come across as decidedly less ambitious than Hoyoverse’s previous efforts, but I don’t believe this to be the case, and you shouldn’t be fooled into thinking Zenless doesn’t have sauce all of its own.

For one, the game’s presentation is easily Hoyoverse’s most accomplished to date, with beautiful visuals, a killer soundtrack, and animated cutscenes that wouldn’t seem out of place in a big-budget, feature-length movie. The quality of animation extends to its combat, too, which is a little style-over-substance for sure, but nonetheless provides dopamine-inducing encounters and satisfying visual feedback.

To address the elephant in the room, though, not everyone will get on with the free-to-play gacha model (which essentially locks most characters behind a probability-based chance system) here. While Zenless Zone Zero’s onboarding is generous with an abundance of resources, being at the mercy of randomness for character obtention will undoubtedly frustrate some players. Pair this with the energy system that limits the play of certain modes and the game can certainly feel restrictive once story content and other non-energy-requiring modes have dried up.

Still, if you’re after a casual-friendly game with staggering production value, Zenless Zone Zero’s presentation and combat are well worth checking out especially given the zero cost of entry. 

New horizons

Zenless Zone Zero takes place in New Eridu, one of the last remaining safe havens for civilization after Hollows - localized zones that warp areas and turn those within into monstrous beings - ravage the planet. Our protagonists are Belle and Wise, siblings who take up the profession of Proxies who help guide combat-capable agents through these Hollow zones for anything from treasure hunting to search and rescue missions.

You’ll have the choice to play as Belle or Wise at the start of the game, but unlike previous Hoyoverse protagonists, both are present in the story and don’t take up combat roles. That instead goes to the aforementioned agents, some of which you’ll unlock for free in the opening chapter, and the rest becoming available via Zenless’s gacha system.

So far, each chapter of the story focuses on a particular group of agents belonging to various factions. The Cunning Hares, for example, is a ragtag, slightly unprofessional group that provides much of the game’s (genuinely very funny) comic relief. Belobog Heavy Industries, meanwhile, is a construction firm that specializes in deploying heavy-duty machinery in dangerous Hollow areas. 

Sadly, in true Hoyoverse fashion, it takes a bit for the wider picture to come into play. But having played through all of the release version’s main story content, this feeling doesn’t last long - and the three chapters we have right now are exceptionally well-paced and brimming with eyebrow-raising lore tidbits.

Well-hoyoversed

Likely, whether you’ll take to Zenless Zone Zero or not lies in its combat. And compared to previous Hoyoverse games it’s a relatively simple affair. Characters typically have a basic attack combo string and one or two special abilities, along with an Ultimate attack when you’ve built up the ‘Decibel’ gauge required to unleash them. Said gauge is also shared across your team of three, as opposed to each getting their own.

Your primary aim in combat is to attack enemies to fill their Daze meter. It’s similar to Sekiro’s stagger bar or indeed Honkai Star Rail’s break gauge; once filled, enemies become temporarily stunned. You’re then prompted - rather stylishly - to switch to one of your other team members, at which point they’ll attack with their unique swap-in ability. While bog-standard grunts only let you apply this one time, larger bosses can have this effect applied up to three times, and this is where you can quickly apply buffs and deal big damage.

Zenless Zone Zero has an incredibly unique and vibrant style. Its presentation is its crowning achievement, from the expertly animated cutscenes to the belting soundtrack.

What it lacks in substance, at least at launch, it does make up for massively in style and somewhat in the potential for team synergy. As is the case with the beautifully animated cutscenes, Zenless Zone Zero’s combat feels lightning-quick and responsive. Dodging to briefly slow time and switching characters at the right time to perform a guard counter always feels incredibly satisfying, not least of all because of the powerful on-screen feedback. It’s great fun, especially when you’re building up the Daze meter on single-target boss encounters to stun them and then go ham.

What I’m hoping for above all else is that future content updates start introducing more complex enemy encounters and character move sets. What we have in Version 1.0 is a good starting point - and given it’s a mobile game I’m certainly not expecting Devil May Cry levels of complexity - but when combat feels as nice as it does, it’s a shame it’s currently pretty bare bones.

That same feeling extends to the playable roster of characters, which is honestly rather slim at launch. Version 1.0 brings 16 agents. One of those characters, Ellen, is locked behind the premium gacha banner. Granted, this is standard for the genre, but with six other ‘S rank’ characters available in the standard banner with significantly lower probability, that only leaves the nine ‘A rank’ agents that most will feasibly get. 

That doesn’t leave much room for variety in team building right now. Doubly so, when endgame content like Shiyu Defense eventually requires you to build two teams of three. It’s a shame that Hoyoverse couldn’t squeeze in a few more characters for folks to try out. Genshin Impact launched with 22 characters, and Honkai Star Rail had 23 in its Version 1.0. More characters will certainly be added to Zenless in future patches, but as it stands, things feel relatively bare bones on this front. 

Hollowed out

Thankfully, Zenless Zone Zero certainly isn’t lacking in more general content. At launch, the main story is meaty, with several lengthy chapters to play through. There are also plenty of side quests ranging from quick combat trials to more involving exploration-based affairs that make use of maps stylized as rows of CRT screens you’ll have to navigate through and solve various problems.

Beyond that, there are two major side modes in Hollow Zero and Shiyu Defense. The former is very similar to Honkai Star Rail’s Simulated Universe; you explore maps, earn passive upgrades for your agents, experience random events (that can be beneficial but also very much not), and challenge bosses at the end of each section. 

Shiyu Defense, meanwhile, is 10 individual levels of pure combat, each increasing in difficulty and level requirements. Beat all 10 floors and you’ll unlock another set of Shiyu Defense missions that reset periodically. But given character level thresholds are tied to your account level, you likely won’t see this content for a good month or two. This is Zenless Zone Zero’s current form of endgame, and you’ll need some decently built teams in order to complete each level with the highest rank.

Both modes are very compelling and seriously worth doing especially if you’re a strictly free-to-play player. That’s because both offer ample rewards for building your characters and for the gacha system. Hollow Zero rewards also refresh each week, offering cyclical goodies that help make free-to-play a perfectly viable way of experiencing the game.

Unfortunately, other side modes simply exist to facilitate the game’s energy system, of which you’re limited to 240 units every 24 hours. Energy is spent on most modes outside of the main story progression, Hollow Zero and Shiyu Defense, and is used to earn resources to upgrade your characters. While not an inherently awful system - and there are ways to gain more energy in a day by drinking a daily coffee or spending battery items - it does mean you’ll have to be very patient and careful in how you go about upgrading your characters, W-Engines, and so on. That’ll no doubt be irksome to players who dislike grinds and resource management.

On the topic of actually building and improving your characters, Zenless Zone Zero follows the traditional Hoyoverse template almost to the letter. You can of course increase your character’s level, but also equip them with an item known as a W-Engine (these are also obtainable through the gacha system) affording them powerful buffs. Then, aside from improving individual skill levels, you can additionally equip six Drive Discs which offer more buffs and stat increases. It sounds like a lot, but the game does a good job of teaching you the importance of each. 

Absolute cinema

Zenless Zone Zero’s small launch roster and fairly simple combat are pretty hit-or-miss as it stands, but the same can’t be said for the game’s immaculate presentation. It’s easily the nicest-looking Hoyoverse game by some margin, and the animated cutscenes are a delight to watch.

The crowning achievement here, though, might just be its incredible soundtrack. It’s a super eclectic mix, featuring entrancing lo-fi beats for its hub areas, as well as pulse-pounding breakbeat, techno, and dubstep for combat scenarios. I’ve had the soundtrack on repeat since launch and I can’t wait to hear what kinds of music and genres will be added in future updates.

The only dent in the game’s wonderful presentation is the current performance issues on PS5. One larger hub area sees the framerate slashed in half when visiting it, and more intense combat encounters often sees the game drop below its targeted 60fps on console. If you’re planning on playing Zenless Zone Zero on something other than your phone, consider trying out the PC version, which feels much better optimized than its console counterpart. 

Accessibility

Zenless Zone Zero offers little in the way of accessibility options at launch, with colorblind options being the most notable absence here. You are at least able to fully customize your controller layout for the game, as well as adjust camera sensitivity to your liking.

Should I play Zenless Zone Zero?

Play it if....

You enjoy incredibly stylish presentation Sublimely animated cutscenes, a fantastic soundtrack and brilliant voice acting across all dubs make Zenless Zone Zero a remarkably polished experience. 

You like fast-paced combat While relatively simple, Zenless Zone Zero’s combat feels fast, frenetic, and above all fun thanks to its responsive nature and - once again - incredibly slick animation. 

Don't play it if...

You hate gacha mechanics Plain and simple, if the idea of having your favorite characters locked behind what is essentially a slot machine rubs you the wrong way, you may want to look elsewhere. As free-to-play gacha games go, Zenless Zone Zero is relatively fair. But all the hallmarks of the genre are certainly here. 

You want more stable performance While the PC version fares better, Zenless Zone Zero on PS5 is weirdly choppy in larger hub areas and more intense combat scenarios. I’d consider waiting on a major patch or two before diving in if you want a more stable experience. 

How I reviewed Zenless Zone Zero

I’ve played about 40 hours of Zenless Zone Zero across the PC and PS5 versions on a single account. In that time, I’ve played through all of the existing main story content and plenty of Hollow Zero and Shiyu Defense. I’ve put in around 2-3 hours daily for most days since the game’s Version 1.0 on July 4. I mostly played Zenless Zone Zero with a controller, opting for the GameSir T4 Kaleid on PC and the DualSense Edge on PS5, where you’ll find that the game does feature some haptic feedback elements for the controller.

Rhys is TRG's Hardware Editor, and has been part of the TechRadar team for more than two years. Particularly passionate about high-quality third-party controllers and headsets, as well as the latest and greatest in fight sticks and VR, Rhys strives to provide easy-to-read, informative coverage on gaming hardware of all kinds. As for the games themselves, Rhys is especially keen on fighting and racing games, as well as soulslikes and RPGs.

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Zenless Zone Zero - Official Zhu Yuan Character Demo Trailer

See Zhu Yuan in action in this latest Zenless Zone Zero trailer, and get to know the character more from this urban fantasy action RPG. Zenless Zone Zero is available now on PS5, iOS, Android, and PC.

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Zenless Zone Zero review: HoYoverse’s latest is simple, stylish, and satisfying

“Zenless Zone Zero is at its best when it's delivering stylish action over puzzles.”

• Strong identity and style
• Simple, satisfying combat
• Meaningfully connects characters in story
• Convenient for on-the-go
• Puzzle-to-action ratio feels off
• Repetitive combat strategy
• Grind can feel shallow

HoYoverse has made a name for itself over the years creating imaginative, ambitious games that have redefined the mobile market.  Zenless Zone Zero is the latest feather in its cap, though one that doesn’t immediately impress as much as its predecessors. It doesn’t have the sprawling, open-world ecosystem of Genshin Impact or the layered turn-based system of Honkai Star Rail . In my Zenless Zone Zero preview , I highlighted the disconnect between the player’s role as the Proxy, a guide through the Hollows, and its otherwise satisfying yet simple action RPG combat. The final game doesn’t do much to bridge that gap, but I learned to appreciate its unique identity more as I explored its world and what it had to offer outside of action.

Puzzling design

Strength in style, simple to a fault.

Zenless Zone Zero takes place in a futuristic world plagued by pocket dimensions called Hollows, which are filled with Ethereals, its bad guys. Only those that can withstand Ether corruption can explore the Hollows without turning into monsters themselves. That’s where Hollow Raiders like the Cunning Hares come in. Players take control as either Belle or Wise, two siblings running a video store as a front for their Proxy business. As a Proxy, players get to work with clients across the board to complete covert missions that no one else can take on without drawing prying eyes of journalists and law enforcement.

This strong setup offers a great reason to look into the lives of multiple charming characters and a uncover wider story of city politics, all while taking part in high-energy battles. Zenless Zone Zero  may not be HoYovere’s best game, but it’s certainly its most stylish and unique to date.

Like HoYoverse’s other games, Zenless Zone Zero is a mobile-first “gacha” game that features tons of playable characters and gear that can be won by paying for pulls. While that framework matches Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail , Zenless Zone Zero plays nothing like its predecessors. It’s a full-on action RPG with hack and slash combat, motion comic cutscenes, video store management, and even an arcade that includes a multiplayer version of Snake . It’s MiHoYo at its most creative, though that energy yields mixed results.

It feels surprisingly stagnant for a game that boasts high-energy action as its main strength.

Before actually getting into battles, there’s a left-field puzzle competent to learn. After choosing a team of three, players hop into the Hollows to complete commissions like saving civilians or finding lost equipment. As a Proxy, players control of a creature called a Bangboo to guide teams through the Hollows, which is represented as a maze of TV screens that players need to move through to complete goals and initiate battles. Think of it like a board game. Each TV has a screen that triggers a different effect depending on its design like green icons for healing, gold coins for Gear Coins you need to unlock safes, and so on.

The odd concept feels suited to mobile because of how easy they are to complete on-the-go with touch controls. On the other hand, it creates a disconnect between breezy TV hopping and the actual gravity of the situation in the supposedly dangerous Hollow. While I can appreciate the breezy, puzzle-like navigation, it feels surprisingly stagnant for a game that boasts high-energy action as its main strength.

One of my major complaints with mobile ARPGs is how difficult they are to play on a phone, partially because of buttons cluttering my screen and cameras that seemed to have a mind of their own. To its credit, Zenless Zone Zero fixes that issue by using its TV screens, where players only need to worry about moving through puzzle grids to enter into smaller battle arenas. It’s a smart way to build a game with mobile in mind, even if it winds up taking attention away from the main attraction.

Zenless Zone Zero more consistently entertains when you’re in an actual battle. It oozes with the kind of stylish, snappy combat and animations you’d expect in big-name franchises Devil May Cry or Bayonetta . Crucially, it doesn’t demand the same level of skill as those games.

Each character has basic attacks that can string into a combo, a special attack and a charged version of it, and ultimate power accompanied by a splashy animation. It also incorporates timed dodges that you can take advantage of, either by using the dodge button for a counterattack or swapping in a teammate to trigger an assist. Its signature hook is related to that baton pass system, where players sub in one of their other party members after triggering an assist, who enters the battle with a big attack. It blends into a satisfying juggling act that gives players a chance to use all of their characters.

That’s not where the depth ends, either. Each enemy displays a bar for their health and another for their Daze Gauge. Zenless Zone Zero throws around terms like Impact (the ability to fill up the Daze Gauge) and Daze (the act of actually filling up the Daze Gauge) that players might not understand until later, but they all refer to a character’s effectiveness in filling up the gauge until the enemy is “Stunned,” leaving it open to heavy damage without defenses. It’s relatively easy to ignore this unless you want to min-max, but seemingly unnecessary aside from giving players a reason to stay. It’d be easier if there was a steady way to guarantee ideal gear, but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen anytime soon based on the gacha system.

It feels like HoYoverse is finally listening to players …

Compared to Wuthering Waves , a Genshin -like I played earlier this year, Zenless Zone Zero doesn’t value range of movement or combo diversity as much. I don’t mind entirely mind that. Its lack of aerial combos, for instance, doesn’t bother me as much as it may action game aficionados. The system feels designed around its smaller scope. The tight hallways inside the Hollows and streamlined combat make it much easier to play without complications. It didn’t happen often, but in the rare moment where I got stuck in a corner or the camera flipped on me during a fight, I was thankful that aerial combos didn’t add to the chaos.

On a smaller note, it’s refreshing to complete commissions without the text-heavy fluff you’d see in HoYoverse’s other games. I pop into a TV, solve puzzles, and mash buttons to brute force through enemies with only a few lines of text in between. It feels like HoYoverse is finally listening to players complaining about lines of filler dialogue and exposition, which it successfully tones down in Zenless Zone Zero to get to the action faster. It knows when to pump up the drama when it comes to the main story too, which delves deeper into New Eridu’s mysteries and character backstories.

To add to its identity, Zenless Zone Zero has bustling locales like New Eridu to explore outside of the Hollows. There, players can run a totally-legal video shop, drink coffee to boost their drop rate for the next combat exercise, and interact with locals in a Persona-like manner that adds charm to the daily routine. These small details are proof that HoYoverse really went out of its way to fine-tune this project, even if the eclectic vision doesn’t stick the landing as strongly as it did with past games. And as a bonus, its jazzy soundtrack makes completing dailies feel more soothing while I’m winding down from work or taking a short break.

It all may sound complicated so far, but Zenless Zone Zero is simple in a way that feels intentional. Take combat, for instance. The system incorporates timed dodges and assists that would theoretically make it more satisfying to rack up combos and clear content more efficiently, but it isn’t ever necessary to steamroll through the plot. An underleveled or gearless character can survive the first few chapters, even if it’d be more difficult without proper leveling. This starkly contrasts with more complex games like Honkai: Star Rail , which demands more strategy and investment to clear chapters.

I’m already starting to feel the strain of repetition.

I’m well past Level 30, so I’ve started grinding for the sake of strengthening my favorite characters. That experience is laid back compared to other live service endgames. There isn’t as much of an emphasis on min-maxing, I feel less pressure to have the best gear. I’m much more satisfied just playing with different team comps and slowly leveling up my characters when I have the time. While I’m no longer a newbie, I’ve still got a ways to go until I hit max level (Inter-Knot Level 60).

I’m already starting to feel the strain of repetition, though. Enemies have differences that make them distinct from each other, but the strategy is always the same: dodge or swap characters before they can hit you, and then mash buttons. Hardcore players are rewarded for their efforts with medals or high rankings during missions, but the difficulty is forgiving enough that earning medals usually doesn’t take long. As I delved deeper into the story, I gained access to more difficult commissions and monsters, but even those felt like they were lacking a good reward for doing the same loop over and over.

Thankfully, it didn’t take me long to pull strong, useful characters or build teams with good synergy. Because I only need three characters to make a team instead of the usual four in HoYoverse’s games, it takes less to build them. Players are guaranteed at least one S-Rank character, the strongest in the game, within 50 pulls on the beginner banner. Zenless Zone Zero also builds in at least 100 free pulls from reaching milestones on the permanent Road to Proxy Greatness Event, which gives players free pulls at Inter-Knot Level 5 and then every five levels from Inter-Knot Level 15 up to 30. The pre-registration rewards and limited-time login events, which will no doubt return later in the RPG’s lifecycle, also gave me about 80 free pulls. This was more than enough to satisfy me as a beginner and pull me past the 30-hour mark before I got to the grindy part: perfecting my team rather than putting it together.

After 40 or so hours, Zenless Zone Zero stands out as a visually distinct, streamlined mobile game that also plays well on PC and console. It has a lot going for it stylistically, but its combat lacks depth compared to competitors and feels like a chore after long stretches of time. I still see it succeeding with regular updates, its character-driven story, and intuitive gameplay, but I wish HoYoverse spent more time pushing the game in a direction with higher stakes and complexity rather than convenience.

Zenless Zone Zero was tested on PC, an iPhone 12 Pro, and a Lenovo Legion Go .

Editors’ Recommendations

• Zenless Zone Zero beginner’s guide: tips and tricks to get started
• Zenless Zone Zero launches this July, and it’s not just coming to mobile
• Genshin Impact: complete Impact Energy Amplifier event guide
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My favorite PC game isn’t a complex strategy title or first-person shooter tailor-made for the platform. It’s Game Dev Tycoon, a casual business sim where players create a garage-based game studio and turn it into a full-blown corporation.

It was simple, but extremely addicting to my teenage brain, and I’ve dumped hundreds of hours into it since it was released over a decade ago. A review of Game Dev Tycoon is even what got me my first job writing about games. As such, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the next title, Tavern Keeper, from its developer, Greenheart Games.

We have the solution to Wordle on July 16, as well as some helpful hints to help you figure out the answer yourself, right here. We've placed the answer at the bottom of the page, so we don't ruin the surprise before you've had a chance to work through the clues. So let's dive in, starting with a reminder of yesterday's answer. Yesterday's Wordle answer Let's start by first reminding ourselves of yesterday's Wordle answer for those new to the game or who don't play it daily, which was "CADET." So we can say that the Wordle answer today definitely isn't that. Now, with that in mind, perhaps take another stab at it using one of these Wordle starting words and circle back if you have no luck. Hints for today's Wordle Still can't figure it out? We have today's Wordle answer right here, below. But first, one more thing: Let's take a look at three hints that could help you find the solution, without giving it away, so there's no need to feel guilty about keeping your streak alive -- you put in some work, after all! Or just keep scrolling for the answer.

Today’s Wordle includes the letter g. Today’s Wordle uses one vowel. Today's Wordle is a part of a fork.

The New York Times has plenty of word games on its roster today — with Wordle, Connections, Strands, and the Mini Crossword, there's something for everyone — but the newspaper's standard crossword puzzle still reigns supreme. The daily crossword is full of interesting trivia, helps improve mental flexibility and, of course, gives you some bragging rights if you manage to finish it every day.

While the NYT puzzle might feel like an impossible task some days, solving a crossword is a skill and it takes practice — don't get discouraged if you can't get every single word in a puzzle.

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors.

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“Istanbul is a place…where people come to disappear.” This is the sad conclusion arrived at by late in this moving film by one of its principal characters, Lia, a stern-faced older woman who has crossed over into the Turkish capital from the Black Sea’s Batumi, a desolate-looking spot in Georgia. A retired school teacher, she has left her home after making a promise to her now-dead sister. The promise was to find that woman’s child, who’s living in Turkey. All Lia has to go on is a name, and the fact that the now-adult child is transgender.

The movie, written and directed by Levan Akin , begins in the messy, tumultuous house where Achi, a young man who’s for all intents and purposes still a boy, lives miserably under the thumb of his older brother. Lia happens by the house, is recognized by one of its residents, and on the spot Achi concocts a tale, saying he knows the niece, Tekla, and has an address for her. He attaches himself to Lia, who accepts his company reluctantly, and soon they’re off, settling awkwardly in cheap lodgings and combing the poorer areas of Istanbul with not much to go on but hope.

The two actors who play Lia and Achi, Mzia Arabuli and Lucas Kankava , are marvels. Kankava has a wide-open face that registers Achi’s boundless naivete, which is always there no matter how cocky or obdurate he makes himself. Arabuli’s own expression as Lia is often pinched, but as time wears on her, and as she starts to let herself go in a “what the hell” sort of way — she likes to dip into a bottle of a fermented drink called “chacha,” a habit she initially tries to hide from Achi — a pained vulnerability makes itself felt. These are two lost souls who make an unlikely temporary fishbowl for themselves, far from homes they may never return to.

On one of their ferry rides, Akin’s camera makes a graceful camera move away from the anxious Lia and Achi and settles on the more content-in-the-moment face of a trans woman, whose story the movie then picks up. This is not, as is soon made clear, Tekla. The character’s name is Evrim, and she’s a woman who’s found a purpose. Near to completing a law degree, she works for a trans rights NGO that also looks into various cases in poorer neighborhoods; at one point we see her springing a young boy and his younger sister, who act on the peripheries of the movie’s central story threads, from jail. She’s confident and compassionate, enjoys a fairly robust sex life, but she’s subject to condescension — at best — from the various authority figures she’s obliged to deal with. Deniz Dumanli’s portrayal of the character is extraordinary, grounded, vanity-free.

Lia and Achi’s story will intersect with Evrim’s, but not right away. Akin is here working in a tradition established in Italian Neo-realism — and by the end of the film, he shows he can turn on the viewer’s tear ducts as deftly as De Sica did in his prime — but his narrative approach brings a vivid freshness to the proceedings. The camerawork he concocts with cinematographer Lisabi Fridell , often shooting through windows and doorways, often gives the viewer a “fly on the wall” feeling, but never becomes voyeuristic. It invites empathy, not titillation. And the movie’s portrait of Istanbul — roiling, unglamorous, and yes, packed with stray cats — makes the city a character in and of itself.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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What caused the great CrowdStrike-Windows meltdown of 2024? History has the answer

[Updated 24-July with details from CrowdStrike's preliminary post-incident review]

Microsoft Windows powers more than a billion PCs and millions of servers worldwide, many of them playing key roles in facilities that serve customers directly. So, what happens when a trusted software provider delivers an update that causes those PCs to immediately stop working?

As of July 19, 2024, we know the answer to that question: Chaos ensues.

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In this case, the trusted software developer is a firm called CrowdStrike Holdings, whose previous claim to fame was being the security firm that analyzed the 2016 hack of servers owned by the Democratic National Committee. That's just a quaint memory now, as the firm will forever be known as The Company That Caused The Largest IT Outage In History . It grounded airplanes, cut off access to some banking systems, disrupted major healthcare networks, and threw at least one news network off the air.

Microsoft estimates that the CrowdStrike update affected 8.5 million Windows devices. That's a tiny percentage of the worldwide installed base, but as David Weston, Microsoft's Vice President for Enterprise and OS Security, notes, "the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services." According to a Reuters report , "Over half of Fortune 500 companies and many government bodies such as the top US cybersecurity agency itself, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, use the company's software."

What happened?

CrowdStrike, which sells security software designed to keep systems safe from external attacks, pushed a faulty "sensor configuration update" to the millions of PCs worldwide running its Falcon Sensor software. That update was, according to CrowdStrike, a "Channel File" whose function was to identify newly observed, malicious activity by cyberattackers.

Although the update file had a .sys extension, it was not itself a kernel driver. It communicates with other components in the Falcon sensor that run in the same space as the Windows kernel, the most privileged level on a Windows PC, where they interact directly with memory and hardware. CrowdStrike says a "logic error" in that code caused Windows PCs and servers to crash within seconds after they booted up, displaying a STOP error, more colloquially known as the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).

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In a Preliminary Post Incident Review posted on its website July 24, CrowdStrike confirmed some details about the incident that had previously been reported and added a few more. The code that failed was part of the Falcon sensor, which runs in the Windows kernel space. Version 7.11 of the sensor was released on February 28, 2024. According to CrowdStrike, this release introduced "a new [InterProcess Communication (IPC)] Template Type to detect novel attack techniques that abuse Named Pipes. This release followed all Sensor Content testing procedures..."

Three additional instances of the IPC Template Type were deployed between April 8 and April 24, without incident. On July 19, the company says, "two additional IPC Template Instances were deployed. Due to a bug in the Content Validator, one of the two Template Instances passed validation despite containing problematic content data." Those instances were deployed into production. "When received by the sensor and loaded into the Content Interpreter," the report continues, "problematic content in Channel File 291 resulted in an out-of-bounds memory read triggering an exception. This unexpected exception could not be gracefully handled, resulting in a Windows operating system crash (BSOD)."

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Repairing the damage from a flaw like this is a painfully tedious process that requires manually rebooting every affected PC into the Windows Recovery Environment and then deleting the defective file from the PC using the old-school command line interface. If the PC in question has its system drive protected by Microsoft's BitLocker encryption software, as virtually all business PCs do, the fix requires one extra step: entering a unique 48-character BitLocker recovery key to gain access to the drive and allow the removal of the faulty CrowdStrike driver.

If you know anyone whose job involves administering Windows PCs in a corporate network that uses the CrowdStrike code, you can be confident they are very busy right now, and will be for days to come.

We've seen this movie before

When I first heard about this catastrophe (and I am not misusing that word, I assure you), I thought it sounded familiar. On Reddit's Sysadmin Subreddit, user u/externedguy reminded me why . Maybe you remember this story from 14 years ago:

"Defective McAfee update causes worldwide meltdown of XP PCs." Oops, they did it again. At 6AM today, McAfee released an update to its antivirus definitions for corporate customers that had a slight problem. And by "slight problem," I mean the kind that renders a PC useless until tech support shows up to repair the damage manually. As I commented on Twitter earlier today, I'm not sure any virus writer has ever developed a piece of malware that shut down as many machines as quickly as McAfee did today.

In that case, McAfee had delivered a faulty virus definition (DAT) file to PCs running Windows XP. That file falsely detected a crucial Windows system file, Svchost.exe, as a virus and deleted it. The result, according to a contemporary report , is that "affected systems will enter a reboot loop and [lose] all network access."

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The parallels between that 2010 incident and this year's CrowdStrike outage are uncanny. At its core was a defective update, pushed to millions of PCs running a powerful software agent, causing the affected devices to stop working. Recovery required manual intervention on every single device. Plus, the flawed code was pushed out by a public security company desperately trying to grow in a brutally competitive marketplace.

The timing was particularly unfortunate for McAfee. Intel had announced its intention to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion on April 19, 2010. The defective DAT file was released two days later, on April 21.

That 2010 McAfee screw-up was a big deal, kneecapping Fortune 500 companies (including Intel!) as well as universities and government/military deployments worldwide. It knocked 10% of the cash registers at Australia's largest grocery chain offline, forcing the closure of 14 to 18 stores.

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In the You Can't Make This Up Department… CrowdStrike's founder and CEO, George Kurtz, was McAfee's Chief Technology Officer during that 2010 incident.

What makes the 2024 sequel so much worse is that it also affected Windows-based servers running in the cloud, on Microsoft Azure and on AWS. Just as with the many laptops and desktop PCs that were bricked by this faulty update, the cloud-based servers require time-consuming manual interventions to recover.

CrowdStrike's QA failed

Surprisingly, this isn't CrowdStrike's first faulty Falcon sensor update this year.

Less than a month earlier, according to a report from The Stack , CrowdStrike released a detection logic update for the Falcon sensor that exposed a bug in the sensor's Memory Scanning feature. "The result of the bug," CrowdStrike wrote in a customer advisory, "is a logic error in the CsFalconService that can cause the Falcon sensor for Windows to consume 100% of a single CPU core." The company rolled back the update, and customers were able to resume normal operations by rebooting.

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At the time, computer security expert Will Thomas noted on X/Twitter , "[T]his just goes to show how important it is to download new updates to one machine to test it first before rolling out to the whole fleet!"

In that 2010 incident, the root cause turned out to be a complete breakdown of the QA process . It seems self-evident that a similar failure in QA is at work here. Were these two CrowdStrike updates not tested before they were pushed out to millions of devices?

Part of the problem might be a company culture that's long on tough talk. In the most recent CrowdStrike earnings call, CEO George Kurtz boasted about the company's ability to "ship game-changing products at a rapid pace," taking special aim at Microsoft:

And more recently, following yet another major Microsoft breach in CIS' Cyber Safety Review Board's findings, we received an outpouring of requests from the market for help. We decided enough is enough, there's a widespread crisis of confidence among security and IT teams within the Microsoft security customer base. […] Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. CISAs now have the ability to reduce monoculture risk from only using Microsoft products and cloud services. Our innovation continues at breakneck pace multiplying the reasons for the market to consolidate on Falcon. Thousands of organizations are consolidating on the Falcon platform.

Given recent events, some of those customers might be wondering whether that "breakneck pace" is part of the problem.

As part of its initial response, CrowdStrike says it plans to take additional measures to improve "software resiliency and testing." More importantly, it plans to implement a "staggered deployment strategy ... in which updates are gradually deployed to larger portions of the sensor base, starting with a canary deployment." The company also committed to provide customers with "greater control over the delivery of Rapid Response Content updates by allowing granular selection of when and where these updates are deployed."

Meanwhile, the United States House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee plans to call CrowdStrike's CEO up for hearings on what went wrong, and CrowdStrike's Chief Security Officer, Shawn Henry, posted an apology on LinkedIn , admitting "On Friday, we failed you. ... The confidence we built in drips over the years was lost in buckets within hours, and it was a gut punch."

How much fault should Microsoft shoulder?

It's impossible to let Microsoft completely off the hook. After all, the Falcon sensor problems were unique to Windows PCs, as admins of Linux and Mac-focused shops were quick to remind us.

Partly, that's an architectural issue. Developers of system-level apps for Windows, including security software, historically implement their features using kernel extensions and drivers. As this example illustrates, faulty code running in the kernel space can cause unrecoverable crashes, whereas code running in user space can't.

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That used to be the case with MacOS as well, but in 2020, with MacOS 11, Apple changed the architecture of its flagship OS to strongly discourage the use of kernel extensions . Instead, developers are urged to write system extensions that run in user space rather than at the kernel level. On MacOS, CrowdStrike uses Apple's Endpoint Security Framework and says using that design, "Falcon achieves the same levels of visibility, detection, and protection exclusively via a user space sensor."

Could Microsoft make the same sort of change for Windows? Perhaps, but doing so would certainly bring down the wrath of antitrust regulators, especially in Europe. The problem is especially acute because Microsoft has a lucrative enterprise security business, and any architectural change that makes life more difficult for competitors like CrowdStrike would be rightly seen as anticompetitive.

Indeed, a Microsoft spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that it can't follow Apple's lead because of antitrust concerns. According to the WSJ report , "In 2009, Microsoft agreed it would give makers of security software the same level of access to Windows that Microsoft gets." That concern might be open for debate, but given Microsoft's history with EU regulators, it's understandable why the company hasn't wanted to get tangled up in that argument. 

Microsoft currently offers APIs for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint , but competitors aren't likely to use them. They'd much rather argue that their software is superior, and using the "inferior" offering from Microsoft would be hard to explain to customers.

Nonetheless, this incident, which caused many billions of dollars' worth of damage, should be a wake-up call for the entire IT community. At a minimum, CrowdStrike needs to step up its testing game, and customers need to be more cautious about allowing this sort of code to deploy on their networks without testing it themselves.

CrowdStrike caused Windows outage chaos for airports, banks, and more. Here's what happened

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