The Day Shall Come (a film review by Mark R. Leeper).
Moses is the head of a very tiny church in Miami–less than a handful of members–that preaches that the Great Inversion is coming. European whites will be on the bottom and blacks will be on the top.
In the meantime his church is about to die of financial problems. Watching the film one is never sure what group will be skewered next by Chris Morris’ bitter, toxic wit.
Directed by: Christopher Morris; written by: Jesse Armstrong, Sean Gray, Tony Roche, and Christopher Morris.
Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10.
As the film opens we are told by a title card that it is “based on a hundred true stories.” Moses’ church is in financial difficulty. Then he gets funded by a local activist who, unknown to the preacher, is actually an undercover agent of Homeland Security. Homeland Security agent Kendra (played by Anna Kendrick) has an unenviable task.
She has to prove that there is terrorist activity in her area. With no notable local examples she is instructed to frame the preacher in her area. She regrets that she is justifying her employment with what she knows is a lie. The actress manages to look almost identical to her character in UP IN THE AIR (2009), for which she received an Academy Award nomination.
However, the film was stolen by Marchant Davis as Moses al Shabaz. who has a nice, comfortable acting style on the screen. His character Moses wants to do the right thing and so will be the person most hurt by the forces of justice, while Kendrick’s perky young agent has high moral standards. Her attitude rubs some fellow agents the wrong way with her resistance to their scheme.
The Day Shall Come was directed by and co-authored by Chris Morris, who nine years ago gave us FOUR LIONS. That latter film was about four incompetent terrorists more dangerous to themselves than to outside international terrorists. Morris’s style is now more polished and more sharp. Morris repeats that point he made in FOUR LIONS. When we face an opponent we over-estimate our opponent’s strength and under-estimate our own. That is true of both sides.
Morris says that ignorance in the hands of the enemy is more dangerous than is truth. I rate The Day Shall Come a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 2019 Mark R. Leeper