Four Lions is a British black comedy. The film is a jihad satire following a group of homegrown Islamist terrorist jihadis from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England.
A group of radicalised young Muslim English men aspire to be suicide bombers. They are Omar, the leading member who is deeply critical of Western society and imperialism; his dim-witted friend, Waj; Barry, a bad-tempered White convert to Islam; and naive Faisal, who tries to train crows to be used as bombers. While Omar and Waj go to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan, Barry recruits a reluctant fifth member, Hassan. The visit to the training camp ends in disaster, with Omar misfiring a rocket that kills fellow jihadists; however, he uses the experience to assert authority on his return to Britain.
Thought:
Four Lions is profoundly politically incorrect on its surface. Within a decade which shot Islamic terrorism to the forefront of Americans' minds, this cartoonish comedy asks us to enjoy spending time with a group of five terrorists. It almost seems like that conceit would be bound to fail in this day and age. After watching Four Lions, I'd find it hard to believe that anyone could really be offended by this film except maybe Islamic terrorists themselves who probably wouldn't be watching anyway. I imagine regular Muslims would view the characters as such bumpkins that they couldn't even see them as real people, let alone Muslims. Thus, writer/director Christopher Morris walked that difficult balance beam successfully.
Four Lions is profoundly politically incorrect on its surface. Within a decade which shot Islamic terrorism to the forefront of Americans' minds, this cartoonish comedy asks us to enjoy spending time with a group of five terrorists. It almost seems like that conceit would be bound to fail in this day and age. After watching Four Lions, I'd find it hard to believe that anyone could really be offended by this film except maybe Islamic terrorists themselves who probably wouldn't be watching anyway. I imagine regular Muslims would view the characters as such bumpkins that they couldn't even see them as real people, let alone Muslims. Thus, writer/director Christopher Morris walked that difficult balance beam successfully.
On the other hand, walking that other balance beam between a good film and a bad film, Morris really struggles to find his center of gravity. From the very beginning, it's clear that nothing in the world within Four Lions actually exists in any sort of dimension rooted in logic and truth. Most of the characters are simply vessels through which aggressive one liners, comic rants and buffoonery are hurled at the audience. Some of them land quite effectively. The mastermind behind the plan for the group to blow themselves up is forced to communicate with the others through a children's chat room where everyone has an avatar of a puffin bird because he believes that the feds will never expect that. When another character's car breaks down at an inopportune time, he claims that all the parts in his car are Jew parts. Another character asks how part of a car can be Jewish. The response is that Jews made spark plugs to control global trafficking.
From http://www.bpdreview.com/2012/05/four-lions.html
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