[Editor’s Note: the review below is a revised and updated version of my Four Lions review from this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival.]
By Jason Apuzzo. Chris Morris’ scintillating new film Four Lions is so wickedly funny, shatters so many taboos, and is so brazen in its satire of Islamic terrorism – and the vacuous, Western political correctness that supports it – that it’s a wonder Morris isn’t in a witness protection program right now. Not that he would need to be protected from jihadis, whom I imagine spend little time watching indie cinema – but from the Western cultural establishment, whose protective covering over the lunacy of Islamic radicalism Morris rips away with comic gusto and flair in this marvelous new film that opens in select theaters nationwide today.
Four Lions was a big hit at last year’s Sundance and this summer’s L.A. Film Festival, and has already done killer business at the indie box office in the UK (it opened the same weekend as Iron Man 2, yet had a better per-screen average), yet after a long and successful tour of the festival circuit the film only recently secured distribution here in the U.S. from first-time distributor Drafthouse films. Having seen Four Lions during its much-discussed festival run, it’s not hard to understand why. This uproariously funny and sophisticated film, that had the audience at the L.A. Film Festival in hysterics from the opening scene on (Four Lions was eventually voted Best Narrative Feature by audiences at the LAFF), is nonetheless so subversive in its vision of Islamic terrorism – so thoroughly and mercilessly dismissive of any justification for terrorism – that by the end of the film any lingering shred of sympathy that might exist toward the terrorists’ point of view has simply been pulverized. Imagine starting up a heavy-metal band fresh off watching Spinal Tap, or becoming a French police officer after watching Peter Sellars play Inspector Clouseau, and you can imagine the kind of effect Four Lions must have on young Brits thinking of starting up a terror cell.
Four Lions is about a bumbling UK terror cell living in Sheffield. The two key leaders of the cell are Omar (Riz Ahmed) – the only reasonably sane or professional one in the group, around whom most of the film revolves – and Azzam al-Britanni (or ‘Barry’ to his friends, played with Falstaffian flair by Nigel Lindsay), who’s actually just an abrasive, working class white-guy convert to Islam. Nigel Lindsay’s portrayal of Azzam al-Britanni almost steals the whole show; the combination of belligerence and stupidity he brings to the character is pitch-perfect. Other guys in the terror cell include the sweet but utterly moronic Waj (Kayvan Novak), and Faisal (Adeel Akhtar) – a mumbling doofus who for some reason is convinced he can train crows to be suicide bombers. A fifth member of the group, Hassan (Arsher Ali), is a pretentious wanna-be rapper (his music conducts a ‘jihad of the mind’) who is recruited while Omar and Waj are in Pakistan botching their terrorist training.
The film follows the different members of the group as they struggle to conceal their activities, aided only by blind luck – and a kind of inane cunning – with the film climaxing in the terror cell’s effort to bomb the London Marathon. That last sequence in particular is a tour-de-force of action, comic-timing, suspense … and ultimately, great emotional power. Without giving away the film’s ending, let’s say simply that Four Lions does not pull punches about the full tragedy and inhumanity of terrorism. Indeed, much to the contrary, by the end of Four Lions one has the sense that the film’s manic humor has only been a ruse – a clever set-up – for what is actually a devastating and deeply moral payoff at the end.
What struck me the most about Four Lions was the intelligence and sophistication Chris Morris and his actors brought to this material. The trailer for the film (see above) captures the opera buffa aspects of Four Lions – but not necessarily the anarchic, Paddy Chayefskyian verve, insight and verbal wit of the film’s satire. Having made a film on this subject matter myself, I can tell you that Morris has accomplished no small feat in bringing out the sheer lunacy of the terrorist worldview – while keeping the tone light, and respecting the earthy humanity of the characters.
Check this clip out below for an example – it comes from one of my favorite scenes in the film, as rapper Hassan gets recruited by the completely insane Azzam al-Britanni while attending a ridiculous academic conference on jihad:
The inevitable question that films like Four Lions or The Infidel or Living with the Infidels or Kalifornistan always inspire is: is the film ‘humanizing’ terrorists? And the answer is, of course, yes … which is exactly what real-world terrorists, intoxicated with their self-image as divinely inspired warriors, never want. As we know only too well at this point, real-world terrorists do not consider themselves mere human beings … but jihadis, divinely inspired by Allah. This is the pompous bubble that Four Lions exists to pop. And pop it the film does, with the force of an atomic blast. Continue reading LFM Review: Four Lions as Cinematic Tea Party
