The Day Shall Come

The Miami branch of the FBI is working hard to shut down terrorists. The only problem is that they can't find any. Hitting on the idea of manufacturing a threat, the FBI decide to encourage a fringe religious group led by Moses Al Shabazz to purchase automatic rifles and nuclear material so they can arrest them. Agent Kendra Glack takes the leader on the operation, but as she gets to know the Black Santa-worshipping, dinosaur-summoning Shabazz, it becomes clear that he is suffering serious mental delusions and the FBI is in danger of humiliating itself...or far worse.

The Day Shall Come is the latest film from British comedian and film-maker Chris Morris. Coming from the same school of laughs that gave us Armando Iannucci (The Thick of It, VEEP, The Death of Stalin) and Steve Coogan (Alan Partridge), Morris writes intelligent, character-based comedy. However, he favours a much darker, more politically-inspired vein of satire than his contemporaries. His last film, Four Lions, was a comedy about British suicide bombers, an idea that sounds like an oxymoron but somehow he managed to pull off.

The Day Shall Come taps into the same vein of politically-aware, midnight black humour. It does feel a little less topical - the War on Terror has receded in the public consciousness as an everyday issue since Four Lions - although this does not make the subject matter any less startling. The revelation that law enforcement agencies around the world have "helped along" terror groups purely to arrest them later is not new, but the idea they may have created such groups purely to fire up their stats feels a lot more controversial. Morris may have made an error in making this a funny story inspired by "hundreds of true stories" rather than actually dramatising one real story, which may have had more impact.

The film focuses on two main characters, Shabazz, played with masterful comic timing and total conviction by Marchánt Davis, and Kendra, played with wide-eyed disbelief by an on-top-form Anna Kendrick. A sort-of game of cat and mouse emerges between the two, but it takes a turn for the strange when Kendra realises that Shabazz has gone nuts and her bosses are trying to set up a mentally ill man as a terrorist just to make themselves look good, and becomes lost in a moral quandary as she tries to help Shabazz without getting herself fired. There's some interesting questions here about moral responsibility and the film never offers pat answers, but it does lowball the seriousness of the issues by leaning hard into the comedy.

Three Lions worked because it started off as a comedy and retained its dark humour through to the end, but it gradually shifted away from the early knockabout jokes to make its dark ending really work. The Day Shall Come never really makes that transition and also doesn't deliver as bleakly cynical an ending (although it's still an uncomfortable one), which means it can't quite match its predecessor's power. Three Lions was powerfully memorable enough to remain memorable, quotable and re-watchable a full decade after release, whilst The Day Shall Come is altogether slighter.

The Day Shall Come (***½) is still worth watching. It is funny, clever, relentless in its assault on the senses in terms of bureaucratic absurdity (most of it down to Denis O'Hare's absurd FBI boss) and has a lot of witty dialogue and amusing sight gags. It just feels like its punches have been pulled compared to its forebear. The film is available now via streaming services and physical media in the UK and USA.

Al-Qaeda operatives are huge fans of Tolkien

Chris Morris's excellent, if unsettling, satirical terrorist movie Four Lions comes out tomorrow in the USA as a limited release. In an interview with Wired, he reveals this his research for the film discovered some pretty bizarre facts, such as the fact that some Al-Qaeda terrorists are enormous fans of the Lord of the Rings books and movies, comparing George W. Bush to Sauron. Whether that means they compare themselves to the hobbits (who I don't remember blowing themselves up to kill passing orcs) is unclear, but it's a pretty bemusing image.

Four Lions

Omar, Waj, Faisal and Barry are four Muslims living in Sheffield. Radicalised by the war on terror, they decide to martyr themselves for the cause by damaging the British state as much as possible (although Faisal favours training crows to carry explosives into buildings instead). Barry, a new convert to the religion, is furious when Omar ascends to lead the group and, along with the mentally-challenged Waj, is invited to Pakistan for training in an al-Qaeda camp. As Barry and Omar vie for leadership of the would-be terror cell, Omar faces another conflict with his pacifist brother. After the accidental detonation of some of their explosives (and a passing sheep) attracts the attention of the authorities, the cell rushes to London to carry out their plan...


Chris Morris is well-known, even notorious, in the UK for his extremely confrontational and controversial brand of comedy. He first rose to attention fronting spoof news show The Day Today in 1994 (which also gave the world Steve Coogan's character of Alan Partridge) before moving onto the considerably harder-edged Brass Eye. He's been less prominent recently, focusing on co-writing the so-so Nathan Barley (with Charlie Brooker) and having a recurring guest spot on the first two seasons of The IT Crowd. Four Lions, which he co-wrote and directed, is his first full-length feature film.

The question the film poses is, is it possible to make suicide bombers funny? Predictably, the film attracted controversy in the UK before release, but afterwards seemed to win over most of the critics by knowing when to veer between comedy and tragedy, not to mention the complex characterisation of lead character Omar (an excellent performance by Riz Ahmed), a man who is prepared to die for Islam but angers his pacifist-but-old-school brother by treating his wife as a full equal and partner. The film characterises the would-be suicide bombers as a mix of fundamental radicals and crowd-followers who earnestly believe in their faith and their cause, but also benefit from their comparatively easy lives in the West (leading to the hardcore jihadists in Pakistan labelling the British visitors as 'Mr. Beans').

The culture clash is well-handled, particularly with Barry (Nigel Lindsay) who has something of an inferiority complex due to not being born a Muslim and urgently wants to stamp his authority on the group, but constantly failing due to his moronic ideas, lack of stealth (he was in the papers for sending a cake in the shape of the Twin Towers to a local synagogue on the anniversary of 9/11) and ludicrous sense of destiny ("If we don't do this, Islam is finished!"). 'Special' Waj (Kayvan Novak) and the easily-led Faisal (Adeel Akhtar) are more played for laughs, but the writers and actors are careful to give them more depth and turn them from figures of fun into gradually more tragic figures as the film continues (the culminating conclusion between Waj and Omar is brilliantly-played).

There are some genuine, jet-black, laughs in the course of the film (look out for the police snipers arguing over whether wookies and the Honey Monster are related to bears) as it builds to an inevitably bleak ending. This gradual shift in tone, which could have sunk the film if mishandled, is masterfully executed.

On the negative front, the film fails to address exactly why the four British Muslims are radicalised in the first place (aside from Barry's issues), a question that has been often asked here in the wake of the 7/7 London bombings in 2005. Perhaps Morris felt there was no easy answer to the question and so dodged around it, but it does leave Omar in particular bereft of a convincing motivation for his actions, especially given his liberal tendencies in other areas.

Four Lions (****) is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic but always absorbing film that makes the viewer laugh and raises some challenging questions without offering pat answers. The movie is available now in the UK on DVD and Blu-Ray, with no US release listed as yet.