'The Day Shall Come' is the wrong movie at the wrong time

IFC Films

The phrase “a comedy about suicide bombers” does not exactly inspire confidence. In other words, “Four Lions,” the 2010 feature debut for director/co-writer Chris Morris, is a hard movie to recommend. Yet the film, about a group of wannabe jihadists (led by Riz Ahmed) with more mission than purpose, works far better than any skeptics would imagine. It blends absurdist humor (terrorists botching their on-camera threats, dressing in cartoonish costumes to hide explosive vests during a marathon) with humanity that does not sympathize but acknowledges the characters’ brainwashed hopelessness. It is one of the most successful big swings of the comedy decade.

The world changes a lot in nine years, though, and Morris’ long-awaited follow-up, “The Day Shall Come,” is as underwhelming as its predecessor was impressive. This is notable for many reasons, not least of which is that the films actually have a lot in common. “The Day Shall Come” also focuses on boneheaded revolutionaries, with anti-gun African-Americans seeking to undo the dominance of the white race in Miami taking the place of Islamic extremists who accidentally blow up sheep in England. Leading the way this time is Moses Al Shabaz (Marchant Davis), who, like Ahmed’s character before him, is a family man. In fact, his wife and children comprise most of the Star of Six Community Farm and Charity Mission, which is on the verge of eviction despite sometimes (amusingly) taking money from clueless white kids trying to buy drugs. So the mostly harmless Moses and his disciples are particularly vulnerable when targeted for a sting operation by the FBI, after boss Andy (Denis O’Hare) and operative Kendra (a miscast Anna Kendrick) set up a fake arms purchasing operation in a scheme that is more complicated than is worth explaining.

The bigger problem, though, is how benign and misguided the story feels at nearly every turn. The stakes are far lower in “The Day Shall Come” than in “Four Lions”, and the former struggles to establish a point of view in line with the horrifying rise of white supremacy in Trump’s America. Obviously, the idea that the FBI would stretch to investigate a non-threatening group of black men who are opposed to bullets instead of the radicalized white men perpetuating hate crimes is not the least bit funny, and Morris and co-writer Jesse Armstrong never approach the scathing precision, the examination of why any of this is happening, needed for the material to connect. In a late sequence featuring a group of white supremacists, most if not all of them are undercover operatives (Jim Gaffigan plays the leader). As the FBI labors to concoct worthwhile charges for anyone and Moses compromising his anti-gun beliefs drives away his family, the film occasionally recalls what “Burn After Reading” might have looked like without the Coen brothers’ devastating knack for drawing hilarity out of confusion.

Barely passing the 80-minute mark, “The Day Shall Come” would seem welcome considering how often movies about race focus on the past and act as if that is no longer an issue in the present. Yet lately there has been no shortage of films dealing with race in the U.S. in a way that seems urgent. Despite their flaws, movies like “BlackKklansman” (which is set in the ‘70s but very much connected to modern day), “Blindspotting” and “The Hate U Give” all inspire strong reactions and a clear understanding of the complex problem at hand, particularly when it comes to law enforcement. “The Day Shall Come” is troublingly muted, fumbling both Moses’ agenda and the authorities’ refusal to take rampant bigotry and inequality seriously. At a time when the country is both confronting and turning away from institutionalized oppression in many forms, notions of comedy have warped and standards for political satire have elevated.

So it is small consolation when Morris lands a few laughs, such as Moses promising an army of just four or five (subscribing to the “first some, then more” principle out of necessity) and “Make warheads from cookie dough” gracing the cover of Al Qaeda magazine. The movie has flickers of truth, like Moses’ feelings about weapons being based in his assertion that “The gun is what the white man gave us to destroy each other, doing his job for him.” But the idea of rival informants competing with each other goes nowhere, and the same goes for weak lines like Kendra claiming “We only called the emergency because we knew there wasn’t one” after the FBI boxes itself into a corner.

Perhaps Morris, who is British, was the wrong person to attempt something like this. Maybe the issues at hand in America in 2019 are beyond the scope of any feature-length satire. On the most basic level, though, “The Day Shall Come” is not that funny and not that smart, resulting in something that the characters in “Four Lions” never experienced: a total dud

C

Order “Zack Morris Lied 329 Times! Reassessing every ridiculous episode of ‘Saved by the Bell’ … with stats” (featuring interviews with 22 cast members, plus the co-founder of Saved by the Max and the creator of “Zack Morris is Trash”)