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Four Lions (2010)

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Synopsis

British provocateur Chris Morris – the warped genius behind TV series such as 'The Day Today', 'Brass Eye' and 'Nathan Barley' – has chosen to chronicle the day-to-day travails of a group of suicide bombers for his debut film feature.

Movie review

From Time Out London

Media hysteria is Chris Morris’s specialist subject. More than 15 years later, it’s still barely possible to watch an ITV news bulletin without thinking of ‘The Day Today’, home to Peter O’Hanraha-hanrahan and some of the most bombastic news graphics known to man. Then with ‘Brass Eye’, Morris took further aim at the media’s uncanny ability to whip up a frenzy about any old nonsense and persuade gullible celebs like Noel Edmonds and Phil Collins to join them for the ride.

‘Four Lions’ is Morris’s first feature film, written with ‘Peep Show’ scribes Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, and is no less concerned with the media’s bending of the truth, even if its model is more ‘The Young Ones’ than ‘Newsnight’. So much has been said about ‘homegrown’ terrorism (like it’s some sort of cannabis plant) that Morris counters the chatter not by reconstructing and mocking the reporting of falsehoods in the style of ‘The Day Today’ or ‘Brass Eye’ but by making a knockabout comedy about five wannabe jihadis from Sheffield.

Morris wants us to point and laugh at these twits: Omar (Riz Ahmed), a family man, outwardly sensible, who travels to Afghanistan and fires a missile launcher the wrong way round; Barry (Nigel Lindsay), a white convert and angry hothead who wants to bomb mosques to make Muslims rise up; Fessel (Adeel Akhtar), a dopey fool with mud for brains who pretends to be from the IRA when buying chemicals; Waj (Kayvan Novak), an infantile and thick brute who sees heaven like the ‘rubber-dinghy rapids’ ride at Alton Towers and views life through an Xbox; and Hassan (Arsher Ali), a rapping joker who Barry meets when he reveals a ‘bomb belt’ of party poppers at a public political debate.

We follow these misguided clowns as they persuade a dumb neighbour they’re a band; as they try to make bombs; as they sing Toploader on the way down the M1; and as they try to blow themselves up dressed as fun runners in the London marathon. The film opens with a botched attempt to record a martyr’s video and continues in the same absurdist spirit. The film looks as cheap as these guys’ homemade bombs; it has a loose, freewheeling air, although the humour of the script is as crafted and honed as anything in ‘Peep Show’ or ‘The Thick of It’ and delights in similar wordplay: Bin Laden becomes ‘some Paki Steptoe’; two police marksmen argue over whether the Honey Monster is a bear; and clueless Barry spits: ‘Jews invented spark plugs to control global traffic.’

Those expecting slick, serious-minded satire might be a little surprised: Morris and his team dress their sharp observations and savage one-liners in the clothes of slapstick pratfalls and broad gags. Many filmmakers who undertook the level of research that Morris claims to have done before making ‘Four Lions’ would have come up with a work of sombre realism that tried to explain its protagonists’ motivations and make us understand them more. Morris might achieve the latter, and there’s a serious, even moving, tone behind the gags, but there’s nothing sombre or even very real about ‘Four Lions’. It’s scrappy and chaotic. Some scenes are hilarious; some are too loopy or uncomfortable to provoke laughs; all strive to achieve something genuinely unusual and essentially true.

Obviously, just to make a comedy about terrorists is daring. But what’s most bold about ‘Four Lions’ is not the gags at the expense of these fools (they feel fully justified) or the finger-pointing at the similar stupidity and incompetence of the authorities. No – it’s the decision to see the world from these lads’ point of view, not ours.

This means that we run along, laughing, with the quiet suggestion that maybe our country is, as they say, just a little bit, well, shit. The film’s opening shot looks like a mosque at night but turns out to be the uninspiring dome of a dull shopping centre where Omar works in security. Repeated establishing shots of a top-flat ‘bomb factory’ place it next to a grim flyover on the edge of a city. We might not agree with the cry ‘Let’s bomb Boots!’, but ‘Fuck Mini Babybel!’ has an oddly rousing ring to it by the end of this uneasy, surprising sort-of-comedy.

Author: Dave Calhoun

Time Out London Issue 2072: 13-19 May, 2010

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User reviews of this film

bob said...

Posted on Nov 24 2011 19:13 i love this film so much it made me laugh so much it was amazing

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Carol said...

Posted on Sep 05 2011 12:13 What can I say, I have not laughed so much or loud since watching Charlie Chaplin or Marx Brother's films! The writer/producer and director deserve an award for the satire and humour, just brilliant and can't wait to download the film and watch repeatedly.. Well done to the actors, scriptwriter and all concerned for a brilliant work of art.

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godbluff said...

Posted on May 09 2011 13:09 When you can't argue anything, just attack a lazy stereotype. Some of us are working class and still find it funny - and I personally find it impossible to not find something ridiculous about every religion. I suppose you prefer the mindless inhuman demonised bombers presented by the media as truth.

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jim d. said...

Posted on May 09 2011 12:39 A film for the middle classes to safely laugh at islam under the guise of black comedy/satire, guilt free.

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Alan Davison said...

Posted on Mar 22 2011 21:47 Absolute rubbish. The worst film I've seen since I foolishly took my girlfriend to see "Endless Night" in the 1970's

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lisa said...

Posted on Feb 01 2011 09:48 SO VERY FUNNY, stil giggling the morning after watching it, last time i laughed at a film so much was eddie murphy when he did stand up , take it for what it is , just a film

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Godbluff said...

Posted on Sep 13 2010 16:39 Having recently watched this movie I can see why it is dividing opinion so much. It's partly about how everyone catagorises it. If you expect a straightforward comedy, you will be disappointed. This is, at times, an OTT parody of life and even old-fashioned slapstick in places - but underneath the humour there is a disturbing, pitch-black element that genuinely reminds you of the disastrous social mess behind homegrown terrorism.
Don't expect Brass Eye (Morris is taking new risks here) - but the balance of the ridiculous and the tragic is compelling - and I would defy anyone to say this was not memorable. Love it or hate it - there is nothing else like this around. It feels insane (or inane) but also believable.

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jules said...

Posted on Aug 31 2010 22:33 Love Chris Morris' early stuff brass eye and the day today but this was just purile made me giggle a few times. But totally over hyped unintelligent tripe. What a huge dissapointment.

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Nasri said...

Posted on Jun 21 2010 12:50 I think that usman latif khawaja should bear in mind what Paul wrote...It's only a film. It's like saying making a film about the holocaust or nazis is racism. It touches on reality and tries not to dwell too much on the atrociousness of this reality.
I'd rather watch a comedy about suicde bombers than have someone actually blow me up. Bit of an extreme analogy I know, but the point is the world is in enough crisis, so we need some light heartedness to give us hope.
Let's not forget that real suicide bombers try to justify their actions partly by saying the rest of us are not following their way, whichi is the right way. In essence they're trying to force opinions onto us. this film is optional, you don't have to watch it, you're not being forced to watch it. If anything it actually educates in some ways, and it allows people not to look at every muslin looking asian as a terrorist.

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Paul said...

Posted on Jun 08 2010 14:04 This film and more recently The Killer Inside Me has generated a lot of moral or religious approbrobrium. Are we getting too thin skinned nowadays and becoming online Mary Whitehouses? It a film, just a film and you don't even have to go and see it if easily offended. My advice to usman latif khawaja is to read some backissues of Viz and enjoy our infantile humour. It's just a film,

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Rosie said...

Posted on Jun 07 2010 20:20 I'm trying to figure out what people found funny about the film. I thought it was absolute rubbish!! Don't waste your time watching it.

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Filmlover said...

Posted on May 31 2010 18:00 Omg not watched something as funny as this in a very long time! I love waj, he's soo funny!!!!

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roberto said...

Posted on May 30 2010 20:39 its so funny and as good as hungover ..well done

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roberto said...

Posted on May 30 2010 20:39 its so funny and as good as hungover ..well done

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BobbyM said...

Posted on May 30 2010 17:35 Please explain why you think this film is bigoted(?) It is of course not aimed to represent by far the whole of the uk muslim community as Its focus is on the bombers and their immediate enviourment. Also by including its portrait of Lead terrorists brother (with gentle humour) it makes clear the point that you can be an extremely devout traditional muslim while knowing that the path of the terrorism is wrong. which in the face of the leader and wifes more relaxed form of dress shows how you should not judge people by appearances and beliefs.

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