[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.
What has happened to American filmmaking that we let the Brits get to this subject matter first? Watching Four Lions I was reminded of how utterly repressed, how politically correct, how tendentious and boring American filmmaking has become of late. How have we become so morally clouded and unsure of ourselves, so confused by our own basic humanity, that we can’t make clear-eyed films like this anymore? As recently as the 1970s, I think a film like Four Lions would’ve still been possible to make in the United States. For now, however, it apparently takes the Brits to make a film like this – and congratulations to Alamo Drafthouse Films and Tim League for breaking the American blockade and distributing this film.
One final word: I am getting extremely tired of listening to conservatives complain 24/7 about Hollywood liberals, while doing basically nothing to support courageous films like this. I have not heard of Four Lions being mentioned anywhere on talk radio, Fox News, or even on what are referred to as ‘conservative film sites’ – media outlets that will nonetheless document every inane crack from has-beens like Michael Moore with studious, even loving detail. Why is that? Is it really because they ‘haven’t heard’ about this film? The same way they ‘hadn’t heard’ that Angelina Jolie and Sony had released a $110 million anti-communist thriller (Salt) this summer? Or a lot of other films I could mention that came out this year with anti-communist or anti-Islamofascist themes? We’ve been covering these films for months here at Libertas.
I suspect it’s because certain media conservatives have so defined their careers according to the anti-Hollywood narrative that they literally can’t let their audiences know about a film like Four Lions … for fear that this narrative will gradually be challenged, and they’ll be out of a gig. Shame on them.
I strongly suggest that readers break this petty little blockade against this film (and others I could mention), think for yourselves, and go see Four Lions. This is your cinematic Tea Party. For now.
Posted on November 5th, 11:31am.
I’ve been waiting for years for a movie … any movie that would go after the terrorists, but nine years after 9/11 Hollywood is still too afraid to take the Islamo-fascists on. That’s why I’m glad this film got made. It’s interesting that it had to be make in England and not here because America is still too run by the PC police to take this subject on. Thanks for the well-written review as always and I will definitely try to go see this this weekend.
You’ll have a great time, Veeki – thanks for commenting, and keep the faith.
Just a little point you may not have realised (although, for all I know, the film may address it): Four Lions is a play on Three Lions, the Royal Arms of England, and the crest of the English national soccer team (as illustrated by this annoying novelty hit from 1996. The poster above is a parody of this symbol.
Actually, I did not know that – and that was not an element of the film, although there may be some inside reference I didn’t notice. Thanks for bringing that up – it’s possible Morris should’ve been more explicit about that in the film, for those of us outside the UK.
I’m still waiting for any British praise for this film on here. In Britain, where Morris is known and his targets better understood, only Leftists enjoyed this film.
Not wishing to reignite our old debate, but it’s comments like “America is still too run by the PC police” that make me realise where the translation error is with this film. If you only knew how many basic expressions of personal opinion in speech or writing are now LITERALLY ILLEGAL in Britain you’d see that America is still the beacon, and that the film you think Four Lions to be would be a total impossibility. Here the ‘PC police’ really are the police, and they can and do put you away for expressing views. This film is a product of that PC consensus, and what you are all taking as specific anti-Islamist satire is just British shock humour, the puerile obsession with finding hilarity in the grave and the tragic. Morris’s Leftist credentials, and fashionable status among the media elite, allow him space to get away with far more than would be the case with, say, an openly conservative director (in itself a virtual impossibility). He wants to offend the soft targets, not the Islamists, and as I said before it is a matter of record that Morris ran his script past a former Gunatanamo detainee to check that it contained ‘nothing offensive to British muslims’.
Really, you’ve got the context wrong, and I’m sorry for going on and on about this – I do realise how unwelcome this intervention must be when I’d already said all this last time, and I do take your point about the possible inadvertent benefits of the film – but inadvertent they most certainly are, and it makes me weep to see a bunch of great people getting misled this way.
Thanks again for your time, and all the best,
Matthew
Matthew, your comments are always appreciated here, so don’t worry about it. It’s entirely possible – even likely – that what you’re saying is true, and that what we’re dealing with here is a case of unplanned or ‘inadvertent benefits,’ as you put it. But the reality is that films are sometimes a great deal ‘smarter’ than the people who make them, and confound filmmakers’ initial intentions. This would hardly be the first case of that.
I suppose what I’m stubbornly insisting upon here is the right of the critic (and of the audience) to interpret a film differently than the filmmaker himself may interpret it.
That’s true, and it’s always what happens with ‘hate crime’ laws. They pass on the grounds that they will only be used against violent white supremacist types (because murder, rape, assault, vandalism and harassment aren’t already considered crimes, or something), and end up with the police investigating reporters for uncovering extremism at mosques. The laws also have the unintended consequence of making the ‘ordinary’ version of a crime seem insignificant. The best illustration of this is the case of Cheryl Tweedy. Nobody contested the basic facts of the case: Tweedy assaulted a restroom attendant for doing her job. However, the attendant was black, and it was alleged that racially abusive language was used by Tweedy- if convicted, her career would have been over. However, the jury decided that she was just a normal drunken thug, and now (one failed marriage later) she’s the nation’s sweetheart.
As for Morris: when he is good he is very, very good – but when he’s bad, it’s like somebody reading out the Guardian’s op-ed page.
I don’t know why my link about the police investigation into the makers of the documentary Undercover Mosque didn’t come through, but here it is again.
Agreed with your last point. I’m getting tired of the “________ said _________ at ________ last night. Please be appropriately outraged” stories. There needs to be more focus on good films that don’t tow there normal, boring lefty Hollywood line. Thanks for being all over this one.
Thanks, Blackhawk. Try to catch this film if you can – you’ll enjoy.
Well said. Support the kind of films you want to see more of!
… which is always our message here.