Chris Morris. Pizza-faced satirist. One of the leading
voices in British absurdism since Dr. Chapman joined the choir invisible.
Collaborator of fellow politically-minded comedian Armando Iannucci. And as of
this particular film, a sophomore feature-length director. And man oh man, did
he come out as reliably all guns blazing as usual.
Those who vibe with comedy on basis of accuracy as opposed
to basis of ‘good taste’ will find their belly full with this one, as the barbs
made are almost cripplingly hilarious. A satire on FBI sting operations, and
the dizzying levels of double-think and mental gymnastics they entail, there
truly are no punches pulled in showing just how duplicitous and theatrical the
whole enterprise is. Setting up stooge terrorists to try and capture real ones,
filling the heads of the mentally unsound with visions of revolution, arguments
over national emergencies that read like Abbott & Costello on bath salts;
it’s a laugh riot, with heavy emphasis on the ‘riot’.
And yet, for a satire of predominantly American politics,
directed and written by Brits, it doesn’t make the mistake of caricaturing the
landscape and its occupants through the eyes of an outsider. Anyone who’s seen
Taika Waititi’s attempts to poke dark fun at the Black Lives Matter protests
likely know what that looks like; good intentions fade in comparison to getting
the details exact.
From its Veep-esque look at the shambles of FBI inner
operations, to the empathetic tragedy of Marchรกnt Davis’ Moses as he gets led
further into the shitstorm, to the images of Spring Break Floridians set
against Moses’ destitute community farm, itself juxtaposed with an introductory
sting that is basically superstition on blast; it all scans, making the laughs
that much earned and the tension that much more ingrained.
Like most of Morris’ previous work, it is bleak as fuck, and
it emphasises the lunacy on display rather than ultimately offering any kind of
grand-scale solution to its real-world applications. It’s the kind of film
where the notion of people pretending to be Al-Qaeda, Confederate neo-Nazis,
and uranium-carrying freedom fighters, all at the same table, is meant
to induce feelings of hysterical unease, and it largely succeeds at it. Just
the overt worrying from the FBI over arresting brown people vs. arresting black
people is enough to show genuine understanding of how much optics play into
politics in all the worst ways. It’s a comedic political satire that lands all
three of those objectives.
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