Four Lions

Published May 3 2010, 00:00 BST  |  By Simon Reynolds

Director: Chris Morris
Screenwriters: Chris Morris, Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain, Simon Blackwell
Starring: Riz Ahmed, Kayvan Novak, Nigel Lindsay, Adeel Akhtar, Arsher Ali, Benedict Cumberbatch, Julia Davis
Running Time: 102 mins
Certificate: 15

Cementing himself as Britain's most provocative satirist after his Brass Eye paedophilia special in 2001, it's no surprise that Chris Morris's feature-length movie debut Four Lions is a controversy-courting work that'll stir up talk about its subject matter. It centres on four Muslim men living in Sheffield - Omar (Riz Ahmed), Waz (Kayvan Novak), Barry (Nigel Lindsay) and Faisal (Adeel Akhtar) - as they plot a suicide bomb attack to coincide with the London Marathon. Of course, springing from the mind of Morris, this is a pitch-black comedy and the end result is a film that's hilariously funny, timely and surprisingly moving.

Like In The Loop, the political comedy steered by Morris collaborator Armando Iannucci, Lions is a hugely ambitious, hot-topic film about incompetent and disillusioned men desperate to leave their mark. Despite its premise, Lions isn't out to offend - its target is off-the-scale fundamentalism and the madness of the situations its protagonists find themselves in. As the cell's plan gathers pace (and a new recruit in Arsher Ali's Hassan), their covert plotting on a puffin-based children's social network is just one example of their farcical nature. There's plenty of conflict, too, as the perennially frustrated Omar clashes with white extremist Barry for control of the group, while the remaining trio's incompetence threatens to scupper the enterprise entirely.

In Waz, Morris has created a first-class film idiot in the mould of Spinal Tap's dense rockers or, to give a recent example, Steve Carell's pea-brained Anchorman character Brick Tamland. The fact that Waz and, to a lesser extent, Faisal, are as thick as two planks only makes them more sympathetic as they're exploited by the members of the team with some slivers of grey matter. In one scene, Waz reaches for Mini Babybels as his example of Western culture's evils ("F**k them," he says!). The fact he also believes that martyrdom will lead to paradise on Alton Towers's 'Rubber Dinghy Rapids' is both hilarious and tragic. So too are Faisal's attempts to turn crows into explosive devices and his bloody demise (sadly given away in the trailer). Morris doesn't restrict the buffoonery to his terrorists - authority figures are in for a ribbing, too. The Thick Of It's Alex Macqueen reprises his bumbling bureaucrat persona, unleashing daftness late on ("We shot the right man, but the wrong man exploded") and Wookie fans should look away during the marathon sequence when there's a misunderstanding between police snipers.

Like many top-level comics, Morris is keen to push the boundaries of taste to get a laugh or reaction. It's perhaps why the word "genius" has often been thrown around when his name is mentioned, and on the evidence of Four Lions it's a label he can sit comfortably with. Though the film never quite goes for the jugular like that infamous Brass Eye special did, beneath its slapstick is an emotional core which is tricky to find in the rapid-fire format of a comedy TV show. Before it heads into the closing marathon sequence (brilliantly filmed on a shoestring budget), there's true poignancy when Omar visits his wife for what could be the last time. Cutting satire is expected with Morris, but it's the heart that's the biggest surprise here. As Four Lions wraps up, images evoking CCTV footage of the 7/7 London terror attacks leave a sharp reminder that this is a comedy of real significance.


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