Four Lions - Review

In cinematic terms a film portraying the lives of 4 suicide bombers plotting to blow up targets in Britain must rank somewhere amongst an idea of a comedy featuring a paedophile getting out of jail and going to work at a school by day, but by night solves crime with his trust 8 year old sidekick “Lolita”. However, this film is from the mind of Chris Morris (of Brass Eye fame), so if anyone can make a highly controversial topic work, it’s this man.

The film centres around 4 men from an unspecified area in the north of England, which to be fair all seems to blend into one when you pass Birmingham, and their desire to become martyrs for the “good cause of Islam”. The film follows the story of Omar, a strangely down to earth Jihadist and his friend Waj, who seems to be the kind of person who would almost certainly spend most of his spare time licking windows. Together with militant convert Barry and Faisall, who is yet another slightly man who is a few pennies short of the pound, they dream of the day they are called up to Pakistan to train for their mission. The next hour and half of cinema that ensues sees accidental deaths, sheep killing, crow deaths, countless mind-blowingly funny Urdu insults, and quotes to keep you entertained for a good few days after. The characters should be frowned upon for wanting to blow things up (at one point, Waj suggests blowing up the internet) and their vilification of Jews (Barry suggests sparkplugs in cars were made by Jews to control the global traffic), but they somehow manage to find a way into the viewers heart.

The premise of the film is to more or less poke fun at the absurdity of Jihad and its followers, and it pulls it off well, as well it should as Morris reportedly researched the script and interviewed people for 3 years prior to writing the script, which involved talking to terror chiefs whose job was to raise the terror level from “uncomfortable” to “look over your shoulder”. It also involved talking to Islam leaders, both fanatical and non-fanatical, and looking someone who believes in beheading in the face and telling him you were making a comedy based on Jihad is like covering yourself in chocolate and being thrown to a hungry Chris Moyles and Vanessa Feltz, and for that, you have to admire Morris’s testicular fortitude. Saying that, the writing is subtle enough to become funny without being too in your face, and the comedic timing is perfect, no other word for it. I was ready to lambaste this film, give it a poor rating and prove myself right by claiming it hadn’t lived up to the trailer’s humour. But my word did it.

4/5