Stimulating cinema: Four Lions

Director: Chris Morris
Year released: 2010

Bloody brilliant film about a group of would-be jihadists who can't seem to can't out of their own way. Genuine laughs are derived from a scary topic (terrorism). Truly one of the best films I have seen, ever. The review comes from A.O. Scott and was originally published in the New York Times on November 4, 2010.

Terrorism is stupid. Terrorists are stupid. It seems to me that these truths have not been sufficiently acknowledged, especially by movies, which tend to imagine terrorists as the diabolically clever authors of complicated conspiracies. But surely the recent historical record suggests that for every extremist mastermind scheming in a cave somewhere, there are innumerable stooges, fools and copycats, their dreams of glory tethered to half-baked ideas and harebrained plots. Incompetence married to zeal is hardly benign--dumb people have done their share of damage in the world--but it can nonetheless be funny.

These musings are inspired by "Four Lions," a shockingly hilarious, stiletto-sharp satire directed by Chris Morris and written by a squad of British wits. It concerns a squad of British nitwits eager to wage jihad and unsure of just how to go about doing it. That there are five of them in a movie called “Four Lions” is testament either to their aggregate brain power or to their mathematical skills, though it is also true that one of the group is subtracted by an incident of premature martyrdom involving a sheep.

Shot in a jerky, low-budget style just a few steps removed from the inflammatory Web videos its characters try to make, “Four Lions” is unsparing and yet also curiously affectionate. Taking place mainly in a nondescript, lower-middle-class suburb, with excursions to Pakistan and London, the film proceeds through a barrage of multilingual, heavily accented slang, punctuated by bursts of nearly “Jackass”-worthy slapstick, some fatal. In the manner of "Extras" or "In the Loop" it offers a thoroughly cynical, cringe-inducingly precise portrait of a slice of contemporary society.

It is hard to know just how to introduce the five self-styled mujahideen whose confused, powerful desire to blow something up sends the movie on its chaotic, farcical journey. Perhaps in ascending order of intelligence? In that case, Waj (Kayvan Novak) would probably come first, since he cannot tell a chicken from a rabbit and studies Islamic doctrine in children’s books like “The Cat Who Went to Mecca.” He would be followed by Faisal (Adeel Akhtar), a dreamy, timid soul whose big operational idea is to train crows to be suicide bombers.

Waj and Faisal are disarmingly sweet-natured, given that they have chosen the path of violence. The same cannot be said for Barry (Nigel Lindsay), whose belligerent fanaticism may stem from the fact that he is presumably a convert to Islam. Or he may just be nuts. His big operational idea is to bomb a local mosque, which he says will “radicalize the moderates.”

In any event, when Barry recruits Hassan (Arsher Ali), who expresses his religious beliefs through bad hip-hop rhymes, he precipitates one of many schisms within the cell, in particular because the leader, Omar (Riz Ahmed), is jealous.

To say that Omar is the brains-- and also the conscience-- of this band of brothers is accurate, as far as it goes. Though he cannot aim a rocket launcher, a failure that gets him and Waj thrown out of a training camp in Pakistan, Omar can tell a rabbit from a chicken, and he can see his comrades’ foolishness. This means that he can expand the movie’s comic range by making fun of them and also that he becomes a vessel for the audience’s sympathy. That he is a regular guy with a job as a security guard, a good-humored wife (Preeya Kalidas) and a young son makes him all the more likable, even as his likability makes his commitment to violence especially disturbing.

Unlike, say, Udayan Prasad and Hanif Kureishi's sensitive and prescient "My Son the Fanatic," "Four Lions" is not an examination of the social and psychological roots of British Muslim fundamentalism. Its mockery is cruel, well aimed and, in its way, fair, since non-Muslim Britons and nonviolent Muslims (like Omar’s pious brother) come off no better than the titular pride of lions.

Inept as they are, the five members of this foursome follow the logic of their convictions to the end, and the film is nervy enough to do the same. It sustains its comedy past the point of sensitivity or good feeling, tickling the audience with matters that may be too painful, too awful, to contemplate otherwise and building toward an ending that manages to be grim, appalling and uproarious all at once. You laugh until the laughter turns to ashes in your mouth. And then you laugh some more.