Four Lions delivers some home truths about terror

Can suicide bombers be funny? In his first feature film, Four Lions, British provocateur Chris Morris takes on the 'war on terror'. Morris - famous for sharp-witted TV satires such as The Day Today and Brass Eye - spurns his usual media mockery for an explosive "jihadi comedy" about the bumbling antics of an inept group of British-born terrorists.
 
Morris says he spent three years researching his film, talking to "a network of contacts" who gave him an insight into the phenomenon of 'homegrown terror'. He concluded that the cells of terrorists which threaten the West from within are simply made up of "a bunch of blokes... fired-up lads planning cosmic war from a bedsit - not a bad pressure cooker for jokes".
 
Rather than use the film to deconstruct the post 9/11 media's take on terror, Morris ambitiously decided to infiltrate the subject from within. Four Lions, which is co-written by Peep Show and In the Loop scriptwriters Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, tells the story of a sleeper cell who hatch a plot to bomb the London Marathon.
 
Based in a terraced house beside a busy urban flyover, the 'four lions' - actually five, suggesting someone may not make it into heaven - are a hapless bunch. The group's leader Omar (Riz Ahmed) is serious-minded and outwardly sensible yet messes up at a Mujahideen training camp when he fires a rocket launcher the wrong way round; his second-in-command Waj (Fonejacker's Kayvan Novak) is a brutish idiot who is convinced martyrdom will be like the 'rubber-dinghy rapids' ride at Alton Towers but without the queues.

Faisal (Adeel Akhtar) is so incompetent that he pretends to be an IRA member when buying chemicals while Barry (Nigel Lindsay) is an angry white convert whose grand plan is to bomb mosques in order to pit Muslims against non-believers. Lastly, new recruit Hassan (Arsher Ali) is a rap fan and prankster who reveals a 'bomb belt' of party poppers at a public meeting.

Four Lions is a film of two halves. The first is a non-stop arsenal of slapstick jokes and running gags, depicting the 'lions' as more akin to Keystone Kops or The Young Ones than deadly jihadists.
 
The second takes on the dark and demented tone which fans of Morris will recognise. As the bombers run amok during the London Marathon in furry animal costumes, the drama and horror of the situation is as deadly as the inept police marksman who kills an innocent fun-runner because he can't distinguish between a Wookiee and The Honey Monster.
 
Some critics have argued that the film misses its target because it humanises the bombers. Yet this is exactly where Morris scores a direct hit, showing how terrorism is based on peer pressure. It may be deadly but - like the real-life pomposity of 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta (who blamed the Jews for making thin bathroom doors after he was teased for urinating too loudly) and the utter incompetance of the Christmas Day 'pants bomber' Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and the New York Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad - it is also juvenile and petty.
 
WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:Andrew Pulver, the Guardian: "Four Lions reminded me of Dad's Army, with its blend of buffoonery and cantankerousness, petty power struggles and blurring of the lines between home and combat life. Perhaps it is also indicative of how essentially unadventurous Four Lions is, cinematically speaking." (3/5 stars)
 
Kim Newman, Empire: "These terrorists are fumbling, squabbling, inept and against-all-the-odds sympathetic - but Morris always remembers the danger they present to themselves and any civilians who wander into their blast range." (4/5)
 
Justin Chang, Variety: "While terrorism can be ridiculed like anything else, it isn't, in the end, really all that funny."

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: "What's most bold about Four Lions is... the decision to see the world from these lads' point of view, not ours. This means that we run along, laughing, with the quiet suggestion that maybe our country is, as they say, just a little bit, well, shit." (4/5 stars) ·