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‘The Day Shall Come’: Chris Morris Takes A Dark Comic Look At Tragic Consequences & Law Enforcement Abuse [SXSW Review]

The opening title card of British comedian, director, and provocateur Chris Morris’ long-awaited follow-up to “Four Lions” reads “Based on 100 True Stories.” Morris’ targets and topics in “The Day Shall Come“— such as radicalism, racial profiling, law enforcement manipulation and entrapment, gentrification, exploitation of disenfranchised communities, etc.— often feels like 100 stories crammed into one. But what keeps the film mostly on track is its proudly confrontational nature, quick-witted dialogue, and performances to match. But it’s a dark, sobering film too—the corruption, dishonesty and immoral law enforcement practices employed to screw over expendable brown and black people is depressingly distressing and it’s here where “The Day Shall Come” has trouble sealing the deal on its uncomfortable remit of awkward laughs and somber realities.

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In “The Day Shall Come,” Moses (Marchant Davis) is a impoverished preacher in the Miami projects and a revolutionary who heads “The Star of Six” (each point of the star represents a deity from different religions, such as Jesus and Muhammad), a small radical religious chapter with lofty, conflicting ambitions about peacefully returning power to oppressed—they refuse to use guns, only minor weapons such as small crossbows— yet wanting to construct futuristic ray guns and take out the construction sky cranes symbolizing the destruction of their impoverished community in Florida.

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Meanwhile, after a failed attempt by the FBI to arrest those they believed were a terrorist organization in the same region— the law enforcement agency, looking to chalk up a victory in the win column after this embarrassing blunder— set their sight on Moses and his followers. Struggling to make ends meet, Moses and his family have just been denied a bank loan to fund their nonprofit organization and save his family farm. In financial dire straits which makes him the perfect target, Moses is approached by an undercover FBI informant (Kayvan Novak from “What We Do In The Shadows” on FX), whom the agency has dirt on, who introduces Moses to a fake jihadist who is willing to give him $50,000 to take an arsenal of guns. Moses doesn’t want the guns, but he needs the money and he believes there’s a way to accept it, f*ck over the terrorists without being killed and put back money into his community. It’s a misguided attempt at a “win-win” and it doesn’t help that Moses appears to suffer from some mental health issues due to economic anxiety, desperation, and a million other miserable factors. Moses accepts, which essentially signs his death certificate with the FBI and the deal sets off an insane, and yet distressing, series of unfortunate events for Moses and his coalition.

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And that’s not even really the half of it as there are plenty of absurd and bleak turns in this crazy, satirical story about the misfortunate, their hopeless circumstances and the way callous, asshole law enforcement (played by Anna Kendrick, Dennis O’Hare, Adam David Thompson, and Jim Gaffigan) abuses and manipulates the people in these communities to fit their own narratives, quotas, and agendas.

In the interim, between films—it’s been nearly 10 years since “Four Lions”—Morris worked on episodes of HBO’s “Veep,” and it’s clear that “The Day Shall Come” shares a spiritual kinship with the politically-charged comedic works of Armando Iannucci. And if “Four Lions” was closer to the ground-level “The Office”-style docudrama like “In the Loop,” then “The Day Shall Come” is his perhaps more of his “The Death of Stalin”; a zanier, more madcap, rapid-fire laugh generator. That is, until it’s not funny anyhow and these situations, no matter how twisted, and screwed up by incompetence and laughably horrible decisions, just feel sad and frighteningly authoritarian. Morris is going for the cruel joke punchline of life, obviously (Kendrick represents the lamentably too-late attempt at a moral compass), but it’s perhaps harsher than it is funny in the end.

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And this is what distinguishes Morris’ latest from all the aforementioned works is how dark and heartbreaking it all is. When there’s a poor black family at stake that is being brutally scapegoated and shafted throughout, it’s just hard to tolerate the grim gags in middle of it all. Especially as Moses and his wife (Danielle Brooks) split; she trying to protect their child from his desperate scams, which are in turn only made in the name of saving their family.

This is where “The Day Shall Come” begins to falter, and your results may vary, but the ramifications underneath the humor really sting. This is the point of course; the laughs leave a lot to unpack, a true gift that Morris has in his cinematic vernacular. But by the third act, the exploitation and abuse of these people become painful to watch. It’s as if Morris tries to test the limits of Woody Allen’s bending and breaking comedy theory, arguably intentionally smashing the plate on the ground anyhow and seeing what kind of dark and fucked up shards may cut the audience the most.

Moses’ more extreme ambitions come from a perilous collision of disillusionment, nativity, and stupidity. The FBI and Homeland Security and their venal invented threats to homeland security operate in lazy, contemptible unethical bad faith fashion all about covering their asses and pleasing their higher-ups in Washington. A scorching rebuke of the FBI, it’s also twisted look at the ineptitude inherent in humans, their blundering institutions and the way those on the margins—usually the poor, the uneducated and people of color—take the fall for it all. Playing an absurd, perverse game of “How To Make A Murdering Terrorist” and “Let Me Make You A Martyr,” (a perfect title, already taken), Morris’ movie ultimately says, not all lives matter, many are disposable, and while lacerating in all the right ways, this tragic prank of ruinous consequences is ultimately no laughing matter. [B]

Click here for more of our coverage from SXSW 2019.

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