Four Lions Made Suicide Bombing Funny, And That’s Okay
‘Is he a martyr or a f*cking jalfrezi?’ 10 years ago, Four Lions put the ‘ha’ in jihad.
Lest we forget the splutter-worthy edge of Chris Morris, The Day Today and Brass Eye’s satirical maestro satirical maestro who brought the media’s early millennium child abuse hysteria to its knees with the 2001 special entitled Paedogeddon.
On paper, his follow-up, a post-7/7 Islamic terrorism farce on British soil was tantamount to self-destruction. Yet, through an unprecedented blend of guffaws, heartbreak and horror, the film is both an outrageous tonic and grounded warning. Comedy and tragedy, united in death.
Four Lions StudioCanal UKOn July 7, 2005, 52 people were killed and more than 700 injured in a coordinated attack on London’s public transport system by three suicide bombers on the Underground and one on a double-decker bus. The terrorists saw themselves motivated by more than the ‘tangible commodities this world has to offer’.
Morris’s pride of British Muslim lions, of which there’s actually five, ostensibly boast similar extremism; warring against ‘western imperialist culture, superficial materialism and the capitalist church of McDonald’s’. Smartly though, these wannabes are given credence on a leash: stupidity is the prevailing constant, not fear.
Four Lions 2StudioCanal UKThey yield incompetence in the field of terror from the off: amid efforts to film a scary jihadi video, one brings a miniature ‘proper replica’ AK-47, while another tries to wear a box on his head. In an effort to stop the ‘feds tracking them’, they swallow their SIM cards. ‘Can I cook mine?’ one asks. ‘No, you must eat it raw,’ he’s told.
There’s Faisal (Adeel Akhtar), a moronic blunderbuss who disguises himself as the IRA and a woman, by covering his beard, to buy bleach en masse for explosives. Similarly dim-witted but infectiously affable is Waj (Kayvan Novak), who consults his ‘confused face’ in searches for clarity and is incapable of telling the difference between rabbits and chickens.
Barry (Nigel Lindsay), a Caucasian convert with ever-erupting FOMO, barks nonsense like a fanatic Sergeant Hartman. He’s a walking -ist, cantankerous and bullish, maintaining that bombing the mosques will give ‘rise to the moderates’ but refusing to give up credit.
In a bid for control, he hires Hassan (Arsher Ali), an aspiring rapper-cum-mujahid who catches Barry’s eye with a party-popper bombing in a town hall meeting. However, the figurehead of this jihad is Omar (Riz Ahmed), an intelligent family man with an honest job in security.
Four Lions Riz AhmedStudioCanal UKWhile his peers are hapless, Omar’s domestic bliss makes his willingness to ascend ‘to the top floor’ via violence even more unnerving. His wife is supportive of the mission, and in a bedtime story for his boy, he uses Pumba and Simba to explain his motives. He mocks his orthodox, pedant brother, whose chimes from the Quran contradict his vision of faith.
Morris doesn’t reach beyond his purview. Iconoclastic he may be, his ‘extensively researched’ ridicule doesn’t strain to rationalise or disassemble their religious rationale – in the words of the director himself, it’s built to expose the imbecilic Dad’s Army side of terrorism. Less Paradise Now, more Monty Python and the Suicide Bombing.
Beyond a tick for massive landscapes, slowly zooming in through the swathes of bustling life to the clandestine group, cinematographer Lol Crawley films with jerky pseudo-documentary flair, giving it an offbeat, fly-on-the-wall energy not too dissimilar to The Office – hilarious one moment, crushingly intimate the next.
The narrative is the road towards demise, unfurling like twisted sketch show: Waj and Hassan shaking their heads to blur their faces for big bro’s surveillance; one lion fatefully and unforgettably fumbling over a wall into a sheep; not to mention Omar accidentally killing Osama bin Laden with a bazooka at a training camp in Pakistan.
Here, the cast – including guest turns from Benedict Cumberbatch and Julia Davis – prove to be gifted comic performers. Novak strikes an affectionate chord, but Ahmed is the strongest of the ensemble, channeling doubt, intensity and the spirit of a caper with barely a blink.
Four Lions 3StudioCanal UKThe construction of the gags is great, but Four Lions‘ genius is in the words. Morris co-wrote the script with Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, scribes of Peep Show and In The Loop – note the Iannuccian blend of Urdu-English invective and banter, including but not limited to: ‘Sad loner trench-coat mafia twazzock’.
Beneath the veneer of radicalism, friendship is the true soul of the movie. There’s a legitimate, almost-endearing bond between these duped souls – name another film that puts four aspiring suicide bombers in a van and lets them belt out Toploader’s Dancing in the Moonlight – but most of all between cousins-closer-to-brothers Omar and Waj.
In one typical moment of confusion, Omar allays his concerns by reducing their bid for heaven to ‘the fast track at Alton Towers’, giving way to the iconic line: ‘Rubber dinghy rapids, bro!’ Quotable, yes, and undoubtedly sweet – but the context is heart-aching right up to the final blow.
In the climactic stretch, as their absurd London Marathon plan comes full circle, darkness comes to the forefront of harder, starker punchlines. Nobody gets off easy: bungling police shoot an innocent Wookie when given the description of a bear, while a trigger-fingered Honey Monster, ostrich and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle roam the streets.
Four Lions Honey MonsterStudioCanal UKThough, the overriding emotion as catastrophe escalates isn’t amusement or even anger: it’s pure sorrow. The cackles echo as the dust settles, but the tact with which Morris employed human spirit and unbridled idiocy, under such traumatic subject matter, is nothing short of a miracle.
By reducing homegrown jihadi terrorism to the whims of loveable morons, Morris gave Brits an undying gift: the last laugh.
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