The Day Shall Come: Marchánt Davis gives a star-making performance in Chris Morris's half-baked satire

15 cert, 88 min. Dir: Chris Morris. Starring: Marchánt Davis, Anna Kendrick, Denis O’Hare, Jim Gaffigan, Kayvan Novak, Miles Robbins, Danielle Brooks

Since Four Lions, his nail bomb of a 2009 film debut, Chris Morris has gone awfully quiet, directing a handful of episodes of Veep on US TV but delivering little in the way of original work. The Day Shall Come is a virtual sequel, albeit one which trades the Sheffield setting for the backstreets of Miami. Instead of dim jihadis blowing themselves to pieces, he gives us a set of stooges this time: the film is based on numerous examples of FBI sting operations, which set about converting unsuspecting targets into freshly fledged terrorists to make arrests.

In the middle of this particular circus is Moses (Marchánt Davis), the charismatic but crazed leader of a black supremacist religious commune, who worships Allah as well as Black Santa, believes animals can speak to him, and thinks dinosaurs can be summoned by klaxon. He and his paltry trio of followers are targeted by FBI agent Kendra Glack (Anna Kendrick, playing a virtual anagram of herself) as ideal patsies, with their off-the-charts religious mania making them easy to pin almost anything on. She soon regrets pushing them forward, partly because Moses opposes gun use, but also out of sympathy for his obvious signs of mental illness.

Alas, it’s too late: the Bureau have invested too much in honeytrapping this crew to call things off. Reunited with his Four Lions co-writer Jesse Armstrong, Morris can be relied upon to get the FBI scenes fizzing with scorn and in-fighting. Kendrick is solid, and Denis O’Hare reliably funny as her frazzled, squirming boss. If your main hope from one of their screenplays is a regular stream of weird invective – “This plays like a penny-whistle jammed up an orangutan’s butt” – it splashes out plenty.

It’s hard to avoid the feeling, though, of a slightly half-baked project here with some unfortunate backstage “optics” (a favourite word in Armstrong-ese). At least in Four Lions, Riz Ahmed and his gang were in charge of their own fate, however twisted their reasoning. Morris gives none of the non-white characters a clue about what’s actually going on, and the mental illness theme feels like a covering ploy that sits awkwardly with the surrounding tone.

Still, in Davis, he’s found a fresh American actor to animate the ideas, in a potentially star-making performance that fights back against the smirky, puppeteering dynamic. And while the film’s sober ending comes up short in its messaging about state power, there are flashes throughout of the old Morris genius. “Act nervous like you’re holding nukes,” some fake sheikh is told, “not like you’re not holding nukes.” The Day Shall Come isn’t prime Morris, but it’s definitely not a total bust, either.