Moses Al Shabaz is a dreamer. An impoverished preacher, he believes in community and has recruited former drug dealers onto the path of righteousness with his collective farm and has a series of madcap revolutionary and religious ideals. But the farm is in danger and his family faces eviction. When a stranger offers cash to help him, he has no idea that his sponsor works for the FBI, who plan to turn Moses into a credible terrorist threat...instead of a man who thinks God speaks to him through animals.
It ought to come as no surprise that, of all his '90s anti-establishment comic contemporaries, Chris Morris has lost none of his bite or his caustic eye for what the powers that be claim to be doing in our name. Unlike his former collaborators who have become the twitterati, firing missives that may criticise the government but ultimately respect the neocon status quo and wish for it to persist, he is still deeply anti-establishment.
Morris knows that the best way to tackle the absurdity of life and get audiences to consider the injustice of the many true-life stories this film is based is to do it through comedy. Like the very best satire, there's a thread of pathos that runs through this to the point where the tears of laughter become genuine tears as you realise the repercussions of so-called intelligence services who have gone from chasing shadows to chasing their own tails.
As this is co-written by Jesse Armstrong, it's perhaps inevitable that comparisons can be found in some of the witty interplay between the various representatives of America's homeland security with the sparky dialogue of The Thick of It and Veep (shows which Armstrong worked on) but there's a sobering darkness at the heart of Morris' work that was lacking in those series from Armando Iannucci, whose politicos retained a likeability despite their many great flaws and terrible actions. Morris reminds us that the dick measuring contests conducted here have terrible consequences for innocents, and innocents in the very truest sense of the word.
In terms of performances, The Day Shall Come belongs to three actors; Marchánt Davis, Danielle Brooks and Anna Kendrick. Davis in particular is a real find. As Moses Al Shabaz he embodies a sense of nobility and naivety that is really charming and deeply affecting. I wish that Brooks, who plays his loving yet long suffering wife Venus, had a little more screen time than she has, because her chemistry with Davis is a joy, but she really shines when she does appear on screen. Lastly, Anna Kendrick is undoubtedly the biggest name in the picture, but there's never a sense of someone slumming it or lending her star power to a little vehicle in her performance as the only FBI agent with anything approaching a conscience, as it is both committed and on the same wave length as everyone else. But in all honesty, no one puts a foot wrong here, it's a very harmonious production.
