The Day Shall Come Review

Chris Morris made a real splash with his directional debut Four Lions, a dark comedy about four idiots who want to become suicide bombers. After nine years he returns to filmmaking with his follow-up film The Day Shall Come.

Moses Al Shabz (Marchant Davis) is the founder of the Star of Six mission in Miami. He preaches anti-violence and the overthrow of the white Europeans. He is also a bit nutty. Moses’ activities are monitored by FBI agent Kendra Glack (Anna Kendrick) and when the FBI looks for their next target she pitches a string operation against Moses.

On paper The Day Shall Come seemed like it had a lot of potential because of the talent involved. As well as having Morris in the director’s chair Jesse Armstrong, one half of the creative team who produced Peep Show, co-wrote the film. And the film has earned positive reviews but the audience reaction was a lot more negative. It only has a 5.6 rating on IMDB at the time of writing. During my screening a couple left during the middle of the film and one person complained that Lottery Money was used to fund it.

The Day Shall Come was basically a farce – it was a film where everyone was stupid, incompetent or both. It was errors upon errors. Because of this Morris went for an absurdist approach where events get more and more ridiculous. This is part of the problem because the film’s screenplay can be boiled down to the phrase ‘and then.’ In Four Lions the main characters actually had a plot – they planned to attack the London Marathon. In The Day Shall Come things just happen.

Morris is known for being a satirist and he has a willingness to take on taboo subjects. The target of this film was the American culture of law-enforcement. It was a world of competition between. The agents were racist with the film attempting to be shocking. But it wasn’t surprising at all. The only officer that has any sense of ethics was Kendra. Agents and agencies were just trying to one up each other. They were fishing for suspects and entrapping people into terrorist acts instead of actually finding bad guys.

The terrorist plot seem like Four Lions if the men involved were not malicious. They were against any use of violence and Moses started his mission to give some former gang members a second chance. Moses’ wife (Danielle Brooks) supports him because he is keeping a group of men out of trouble and just plays along when he talks about ‘Black Jihad.’ This part of the film was undercooked because it brings up character ideas just to discard them. Moses has mental health issues that mean he suffers from delusions but after an incident involving lightning and a talking horse it was barely referenced again. It’s a similar case involving one of Moses’ followers gets excited over the prospect of having guns.

The Day Shall Come does have one saving grace: the dialogue. This isn’t surprising considering who wrote the film. There were lines and exchanges that did raise a chuckle out of me. That was a basic requirement from a comedy and these moments in The Day Shall Come were too few and far between.

The Day Shall Come was a huge disappointment because of the talent involved and made even worst because Four Lions was much better at handling this material.