Not a patch on Four Lions, but you can never go too far wrong with Chris Morris
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Americans are always at the mercy of the evil doers everywhere, including those distinctly in our midst with mayhem in mind. Our military is an under financed wreck, our Navy practically a set of dinghies, a Muslim is even in the White House, a malign climate-change movement is eager to destroy capitalism as we know it, women's bodies are enough of a danger to shut the government down, immigrants are potential terrorists or rapists, and so on and so forth through a litany of strangely woven fantasies and factoids.
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In this context, while the US military pursues its failing wars, interventions, and raids abroad, while the national security state develops ever more mechanisms for snooping, surveilling, and controlling populaces at home (as in the recent essentially unprecedented security lockdowns of major American cities "for" the pope), many of the country's citizens are increasingly living inside a fact-challenged fantasy of a country, a victimized superpower. Boogiemen lurk around every corner, as do high crimes and dark conspiracies, and any sense of responsibility for what the United States has done in the world in these last years is missing in action.
- Tom Engelhardt; "The Most Exceptional Thing About America Is Our Paranoia"; The Nation (September 29, 2015)
It sort of works like this – you're freaked out by 9/11, you have to cover yourself because you're implicated in some of the sloppy procedures that led to 9/11, so you talk the threat up, you say there's a sleeper cell in every city and then you go and find it. Now, you don't know what you're looking for, and classically in the FBI, you talk about other people, the Other, you look at brown and black people because they are more likely, you think, to be a problem. And if somebody sticks their head up in one of those communities, then you surround them with 'false friends', informants who will offer them money and friendship to try to lure them along a carefully scripted program of self-incrimination, which results in that person going to jail. And you'll say to the court, as a prosecutor, "is it better that this person go to jail, or should we let them back out on the streets?" And the juries always say, "better put them in jail."
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In real life, what happened was there was a story on British TV news about supposedly the biggest plot since 9/11, about an army planning to launch a full ground war on the US, based in Miami. And it turned out, three years later I bumped into somebody involved with the trial, who said that ground war was actually seven construction workers who were going to ride into Chicago on horses – this was not a really serious terrorist plot. They had just been wound up by an FBI informant. They had no money, and the informant was offering a lot of cash and so they riffed a crazy scheme to try to get this guy to give them money. So that true story, along with loads of others, informs the story which is in the film, and in that case, in the Liberty City Seven case, six out of seven of them were Haitian Catholics.
- Chris Morris; Channel 4 News (October 2, 2019)
It can't be easy to write effective political satire at a time when the headlines of
The Onion and
Waterford Whispers don't read that differently from the headlines of
The New York Times and
The Guardian. Truly, we are in an epoch where many public figures have become the satirical apotheoses of themselves, making it difficult to satirise either them or the institutions that enable them. Difficult, but not impossible, certainly not for a satirist as talented as the legendary Chris Morris (
The Day Today;
Brass Eye;
Nathan Barley;
Four Lions), who was pedalling 'fake news' long before Donald Trump decided to destabilise the entire geopolitical sphere, all the while claiming he won the popular and that the people of France were chanting his name during protests against Emmanuel Macron.
Written by Morris and Jesse Armstrong and directed by Morris,
The Day Shall Come is inspired by real-life incidents such as the Liberty City Seven and the Newburgh Sting, and aims its satirical ire at the FBI and how they conduct themselves in relation to terrorist cells within the US. And as one would expect from Morris, it's darkly comic until it turns deadly series, a transition that drives home the concept that, yes, what the FBI is doing is farcical and satire-worthy, but so too is it destroying lives, and that isn't especially funny. It's a very delicate balancing act, but Morris pulls it off for the most part. As politicians, journalists, and law enforcement scramble to turn the entire planet into a Harold Pinter play, Morris's is a voice that deserves to be heard, and although
The Day Shall Come isn't a patch on the superb
Four Lions, it's still a bitingly funny study of institutionalised paranoia, garnished with some good old-fashioned racism.
Miami, FL; poverty, racial disparity, and gentrification have created an underlying tension in the city, as the gap between rich and poor continues to widen. Moses Al Shabaz (a superb debut performance from Marchánt Davis) is a self-proclaimed preacher and the leader of Star of Six, a revolutionary group that worships Allah, "Black Santa", and Toussaint L'Ouverture, and that aims to overthrow the "
accidental dominance of the white people". However, there are significant problems; Moses and his wife Venus (the always eye-catching Danielle Brooks) are close to being evicted, Star of Six has no money and only four members, and Moses refuses to use guns. He also has mental health problems, and his plan to overthrow white dominance is to call upon the dinosaurs held in stasis by the CIA. When he doesn't take his medication, he's also prone to hallucinations – evidenced insofar as he's convinced that his horse can talk and that both God and Satan are speaking to him through a duck. However, despite having the "
threat signature of a hot dog", Star of Six end up on the FBI radar, monitored by the idealistic Agent Kendra Glack (Anna Kendricks). With Glack's superior, Agent Andy Mudd (the always fantastic Denis O'Hare), determined to uncover "
the next 9/11", he orders Glack to find evidence that Star of Six is 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. And so begins a farcical series of events, involving an air horn, a sheikh affiliated with al-Qaeda, a group of Neo-Nazis, weapon-grade uranium, ray-guns, a lot of beans and urine, a nuclear emergency in Miami, another nuclear emergency in Miami, a donut shop, a toy crossbow, and a rocket launcher.
The Day Shall Come was inspired by real-life incidents such as the Liberty City Seven (where seven men were convicted of terrorist activities after a sting operation in which the FBI persuaded them to begin planning for an attack on Chicago) and the Newburgh Sting (where the FBI manipulated four Muslims to become more militant, with the aim of shooting down American aircraft flying out of Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, NY. All four were convicted of terrorist activity). After the initial arrest of the Liberty City Seven, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that the group, who called themselves the Universal Divine Saviors, were jihadi terrorists who had been preparing for "
a full ground war against the United States". His comments, however, weren't even a little accurate. In actual fact, the Saviors planned to ride into Chicago on horseback, meeting any resistance by charging at them cavalry-style. They also planned to blow up Willis Tower, which would fall into nearby Lake Michigan, with the resulting tidal wave flooding the city. So, you know, very practical stuff. Morris heard about the case and Gonzales's claims in a UK news report, and three years later, he met someone who'd been involved with the Saviors' trial. This person told him the truth about the case – that the people supposedly planning "
a full ground war" were a group of seven unemployed construction workers, who had been offered $50,000 by an FBI informant to begin planning for an attack on Chicago. As they were broke, they accepted the cash, subsequently riffing ideas until they came up with their Willis Tower ideas. Additionally, despite Gonzalez intimating that the Savors were jihadis, they were, in fact, Haitian Catholics. As Morris began to research, he learned that such absurdities were not confined to the Liberty City Seven case. Straying dangerously close to entrapment, since 9/11 it had become standard operating procedure for FBI informants to actively encourage persons of interest to engage in terrorist activities. And when they do, the FBI arrest them. This utterly insane manner of business forms the spine of the film.
Like most of Morris's work,
The Day Shall Come is a Juvenalian satire. Is it as funny as
Four Lions? No. Is it as funny as
The Day Today or
Brass Eye? God in heaven, no (what is?). However, you simply can't go too wrong with Chris Morris, and there are plenty of laughs to be found here. For example, there's the terror suspect who an FBI informant is trying to get to dial a number to detonate a nearby bomb, but who refuses to press the number five, proclaiming, "
I'm scared of fives. Five is evil", to which Mudd, who's listening in on the conversation, reacts by screaming, "
did we know he was a pentaphobe?" Because that's a 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;
Glack: What do you need from me, sir?
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Mudd:
Right, well, we know this emergency is groundless.
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Glack:
Correct. Right.
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Mudd:
But the emergency exists. And you can't take control of something if you're saying it doesn't exist.
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Glack:
Okay.
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Mudd:
So we have to acknowledge that the emergency exists.
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Glack:
Eh...yeah, well, no. Sorry, if we say, "Yes, it exists" isn't that the same as declaring a nuclear emergency ourselves?
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Mudd:
Technically yourself, but, yeah.
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Glack:
So...to stop a nuclear emergency I have to declare a nuclear emergency?
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Mudd:
Yes. The logic only works if you say it slowly. Keep the contradictory elements apart.
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Glack:
I'd look insane.
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Mudd:
Only if you say it fast.
This exchange is a pretty good example of the type of comedy featured throughout the film, layering the ridiculous on top of the farcical. There's also a very definitive Armando Iannucci vibe, recalling some of the more irreverent conversations in
In the Loop (2009) and the criminally underrated
The Death of Stalin (2017). This shouldn't come as a surprise given that Iannucci co-created
The Day Today with Morris (amongst others) and the two also worked together on Veep.
Elsewhere, Miami Chief of Police Settmonk (James Adomian) gives us another good example of Morris's use 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 profoundly troubling when applied to a real-world context (as all good satire should be). Another line worth mentioning is when Mudd and Glack are debating the merits of what they're doing – Glack feels they're straying perilously close to entrapment, but Mudd argues that they have to employ such extreme measures, or their entire way of life would be in jeopardy and "
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, once again, we can see Morris alluding to very troubling aspects of the American psyche without coming right out and saying, "
you guys are nuts."
On the film's official website, Morris writes, "The Day Shall Come
reflects how institutionalised paranoia corrupts our thinking." The line about the Statue of Liberty is a good example of this, but the theme is peppered throughout the film, with no less than five references to a "
black jihad" (a concept that seems laughable to sane ears, but is not so far-fetched when one realises that 31% of Americans believe a race war is imminent). However, despite the heavyweight theme, Morris never allows the film to become didactic – the truths he espouses are always subtly layered with the comedy beats. Again, the Statue of Liberty line is a good example, as is the "
unarmed black man" line – lines in which Morris is addressing hugely important issues, but without ever giving the impression of talking down to the audience; he's certainly being irreverent and sarcastic, but at no point does he become condescending or patronising. This is a very difficult line to walk, but anyone familiar with
The Day Today or
Brass Eye will recognise Morris's ability to viciously critique social ills without sounding preachy. Indeed, towards the end of the film (and like
Four Lions,
The Day Shall Come gets extremely dark and devastatingly serious as it approaches its
dénouement), 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, general ineptitude, and shocking amorality, but that does not imply we should laugh at the results. The FBI's operational norms may be the stuff of farce, but those farcical norms are putting real people (who are almost exclusively poor and black or brown) in jail for a very long time. Which turns out to be a not especially funny punchline.
The Day Shall Come isn't Morris's best, but it is still Chris Morris, and so it deserves attention. Irreverent, sarcastic, condemnatory, and politically incendiary, the film posits that the FBI is doing more harm than good as they target poor communities in the hopes of finding someone (anyone) planning the next 9/11. And if they can't find someone, they'll create that someone themselves. All in the name of good optics. As funny as it is, the film is also bracing and, by the time the end credits roll, sobering. And perhaps Morris's greatest achievement here is to present something comical to the audience, encourage us to laugh at it, and then pull the rug out from under us, showing us that it may not have been all that funny to begin with.
