Four Lions

Chris Morris may be no stranger to controversy, but his film debut Four Lions seems in many ways to be a deliberate exercise in attracting it. To begin with it attempts to find comedy in the unfunny concept of suicide bombing, hoping to follow in the glorious tradition of films like Dr Strangelove and Todd Solondz’s Happiness to create hilarious films out of utterly repellent scenarios, whilst inevitably offending large numbers of people who refuse to see the funny side.

The film’s would-be terrorists are an odd bunch of incompetent individuals consisting of mentally challenged Waj, wannabe rapper Hassan, Muslim convert Barry (who is completely psychotic), and Fessel who is desperately attempting to create an army of suicide crows. Their leader Omar is perhaps the only person who is reasonably intelligent, although even he cannot tell one end of a rocket launcher from the other. As a result of all this they end up in a series of increasingly ridiculous predicaments bringing about most of the film’s humour alongside some fantastic word play. Yet these events do not always string together very well and it feels like a series of superb sketches rather than a singular narrative. The script is also a source of strengths and weaknesses since although the characters’ dialogue and predicaments are highly amusing, they deal more with the individual’s incompetence rather than the deeper issues surrounding their activities, therefore becoming a predominantly character-based comedy than political or social satire; that is until the film’s final conclusion, when it starts satirising the ineptitude of the security forces, succeeding above all expectations whilst bringing up the memory of Jean Charles de Menezes.

The film also succeeds on several other counts most notably in the way that its central characters come across as true human beings rather than simply as pure idiots or demonic hate figures. Omar has a wife and a son who he clearly loves dearly and make for an excellent counterpoint to the confused madness of their operation. Indeed, all the characters clearly have their own problems meaning that in the end the audience does care what happens to them. That is with the notable exception of Barry, who remains psychotic, yet this works well as a counterpoint to the others’ humanity as a constant reminder of just what they are doing.

Overall Four Lions succeeds as a very funny dark comedy, but where it fails is that it lampoons a group of idiotic individuals rather than the ideas behind them. It narrowly misses its mark, thereby making for something that is very entertaining but lacks depth and suffers as a result.

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