The Day Shall Come

Name: The Day Shall Come
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Released: September 27, 2019
Duration: 87 min
Rating: 70
Cast: Adam David Thompson, Andrel McPherson, Anna Kendrick, Calah Lane, Curtiss Cook Jr.

2019

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Generally favorable reviews based on 21 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 10 Ratings

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6.4

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6.4	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 10 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

IFC Films | Release Date: September 27, 2019 | NR

Starring: Adam David Thompson, Andrel McPherson, Anna Kendrick, Calah Lane, Curtiss Cook Jr., Danielle Brooks, Denis O'Hare, Drew Gehling, James Adomian, Jim Gaffigan, Kayvan Novak, Malcolm M. Mays, Marchánt Davis, Miles Robbins, Mousa Kraish, Pej Vahdat

Summary: Before you can win the war on terror you need a terrorist—even if you have to invent one yourself. Moses Al Shabaz (Marchánt Davis) is a small-time Miami street preacher whose far-fetched revolutionary ideas find unexpected legitimacy when a Middle Eastern terrorist organization offers to help fund his dream of overthrowing the USBefore you can win the war on terror you need a terrorist—even if you have to invent one yourself. Moses Al Shabaz (Marchánt Davis) is a small-time Miami street preacher whose far-fetched revolutionary ideas find unexpected legitimacy when a Middle Eastern terrorist organization offers to help fund his dream of overthrowing the US government. The problem? His backer is the US government and it’s all part of an elaborate scheme to entrap Moses and make his arrest the latest national security “win.: But when Moses doesn’t take the bait, FBI agent Kendra Glack (Anna Kendrick) must resort to increasingly outlandish—and risky—lengths to get her man. [IFC Films]… Expand

Director: Christopher Morris

Genre(s): Comedy, Crime

Rating: NR

Runtime: 87 min

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Critic Reviews

William Hughes

Sep 24, 2019

Bitter and bracingly funny new political satire from British dark-comedy master Chris Morris. Read full review

John DeFore

Mar 12, 2019

The film represents another leap forward for [Morris]. Read full review

Robert Abele

Sep 26, 2019

The result is a kind of rolling theater of racially targeted, manufactured peril that exploits the underprivileged, rewards corruption and ultimately — when the farce plays itself out — isn’t actually funny. But that’s only after it brilliantly is funny, producing plenty of acrid, world-upside-down laughter about the ridiculous truth behind some serious modern delusions about whom we should be scared of. Read full review

IndieWire Eric Kohn

Mar 12, 2019

This time, Morris has less command over the edgy material, positioning his modern-day Keystone Cops in a series of smarmy vignettes that don’t cut quite as deep. But it still delivers a scathing and often very funny indictment of homeland insecurities. Read full review

Monica Castillo

Mar 16, 2019

The Day Shall Come is greatest when skewering power and shining a light on grave legal overreach. That we can laugh about it is great, but it’s a sign of our own security, of how unlikely we feel that we would be targeted in the same way. For others, laughing at this movie may not be so easy. Read full review

Peter Debruge

Sep 29, 2019

The title suggests that the revolution Moses is praying for will someday arrive, but that shouldn’t be nearly as scary to Americans as the fact that his own government is trying to push people like him over the edge. That day is already here. Read full review

Steven Scaife

Sep 25, 2019

The film is an aimless, albeit sometimes funny, chronicle of absurd behavior and government ineptitude. Read full review

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User Reviews

Acr1990

Oct 18, 2019

Another biting exposay from Chris Morris revealing the farcical and tragic repurcussions of the US's post 9 11 policies and the damage caused by the paranoid 'us vs them' mentality with Morris's typical absurdist humour shining through.

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Bertaut1

Oct 30, 2019

Not a patch on Four Lions, but you can never go far wrong with Chris Morris

Written by Chris Morris and Jesse Armstrong and directed by Morris, The Day Shall Come is inspired by real-life cases such as the Liberty City Seven and the Newburgh Sting. And as one would expect from Morris, it'sNot a patch on Four Lions, but you can never go far wrong with Chris Morris

Written by Chris Morris and Jesse Armstrong and directed by Morris, The Day Shall Come is inspired by real-life cases such as the Liberty City Seven and the Newburgh Sting. And as one would expect from Morris, it's darkly comic until it turns deadly series, a transition that drives home that, yes, what the FBI is doing is farcical and satire-worthy, but so too is it destroying lives, which isn't especially funny. It's a very delicate balancing act, but Morris pulls it off for the most part, and although The Day Shall Come isn't a patch on the superb Four Lions (2010), it's still a bitingly funny study of institutionalised paranoia.

In Miami, impoverished Moses Al Shabaz (a superb Marchánt Davis) is the leader of Star of Six, a revolutionary group that aims to overthrow the "accidental dominance of the white people", although they have no money and only four members. Despite having the "threat signature of a hot dog", Star of Six end up on the FBI radar, monitored by Agent Kendra Glack (Anna Kendricks), who's ordered to find evidence that they are engaged in terrorist activity, and if no such evidence exists, then she should fabricate some, because it's easier to manufacture a fake terrorist than it is to find a real one.

The Day Shall Come was inspired by real-life incidents such as the Liberty City Seven (where seven unemployed construction workers were convicted of terrorist activities after an FBI informant persuaded them to plan an attack on Chicago) and the Newburgh Sting (where the FBI manipulated four Muslims to agree to shoot down American aircraft flying out of Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, NY). Researching the cases, Morris learned such absurdities were relatively normal - since 9/11 it had become standard for FBI informants to actively encourage persons of interest to engage in terrorist activities, which strays dangerously close to entrapment.

Like most of Morris's work, The Day Shall Come is a Juvenalian satire. It's not as funny as The Day Today (1994) or Brass Eye (1997-2001), but then again, what is? However, there are plenty of laughs. For example, there's the terror suspect who can't dial the number to detonate a nearby bomb because he's afraid of the number five, prompting Glack's superior, Agent Andy Mudd (the always terrific Denis O'Hare), to scream, "did we know he was a pentaphobe?" Because that's a real thing.

Especially funny is the exchange between Mudd and Glack as Mudd explains that to diffuse the nuclear emergency declared by the Miami PD, she must also declare a nuclear emergency, telling her "the logic only works if you say it slowly. Keep the contradictory elements apart", pointing out that she'll look insane "only if you say it fast." This is a good example of the film's brand of comedy, layering the ridiculous on top of the farcical, with a very definitive Armando Iannucci vibe.

Elsewhere, Chief of Miami PD Settmonk (James Adomian) gives us another good example of absurdity when he argues, "unarmed white man, unarmed black man. Which one is more likely to have the gun?", a line that's hilarious on its own, but troubling when applied to a real-world context. A similar line is Mudd's, "the next thing you know, the Statue of Liberty's wearing a burqa and we've beheaded Bruce Springsteen." Again, a funny line, but given the irrational hysteria and baseless paranoia that forms the basis of how so many Americans feel about Muslims, there's a very serious component at work here.

On the film's official website, Morris says the film is about "how institutionalised paranoia corrupts our thinking." The line about the Statue of Liberty is a good example, but so too are the multiple references to a "black jihad", a concept that seems laughable to sane ears, but is not so far-fetched when one considers that 31% of Americans believe a race war is imminent. Within all this, Morris never allows the film to become didactic; he's addressing hugely important issues, but without ever talking down to the audience. He's irreverent and sarcastic, but never condescending or patronising.

Towards the end of the film, Morris distils everything down to a very simple maxim – the conduct of the FBI may be absurd, but it has a very real human cost. Yes, we can (and probably should) laugh at the bureaucratic nonsense and procedural ineptitude, but that does not imply we should laugh at the results, which sees real people (who are almost exclusively poor and black or brown) put in jail for a very long time.

Irreverent, condemnatory, and politically incendiary, The Day Shall Come shows the damage the FBI is doing by targeting poor communities in the hopes of finding someone (anyone) planning the next 9/11. And if they can't find someone, they create that someone. All in the name of good optics. As funny as it is, the film is also bracing and, by the time it ends, extremely sobering.… Expand

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