Review of Four Lions (2010) by Lin W — 31 Aug 2011

Since the terrorism attacks of 9/11 (September 11th, 2001), what was once but only a passing whisper between politicians, routed itself expressively into the open and soon discovered new, foreign, dialects amidst neighbors and distant citizens of not only the U.S, but too its oversea counterparts. The impact of the attacks, still today hold significant influence in the minds of men, women, and children. I know this, you know this, and first-time filmmaker Chris Morris knows this. What he's crafted is as much a satirical social commentary on jihad as it is a developed wide-armed hug of an unfamiliar, disquited culture.

Morris takes the concept of the undeveloped, presumed and often ignored, Al-Qaeda training camps and runs wildly headfirst in the direction of four potentional trainees. Four Lions follows the lives of four young Muslim friends residing in Sheffield, United Kingdom who aspire to become suicide bombers. Individually, each friend shares no semblance to the other and it is that such differences between them result in fun confrontational acquaintances and even unpredictable levity.

During the three years Morris spend researching the project, he spoke with terrorism experts as well as ordinary Muslim citizens and soon turned his studied hand to the composition of a script with the desire to expertly transmute a potentially nonsensical gadlfy into a culturally intelligible one. He did just that.

There are no subtleties here as Four Lions is all but self-effacing. Yet, it enigmatically deludes its audience from the fear of its very subject and steers them into familiar complacency-ignorance. Here one is presented with an all too different, eccentric, approach to "the war on terror". The outlook calls for certain hilarity and the cast deliver through stereotypical Muslim banter, slang, and beliefs. But Four Lions parallels the offensive with national humility as it is that we have Muslim actors on screen assaulting the very prosaic delusions that suffocate them each passing day. They inadvertently announce this inherent aptitude to as well "poke-fun" of themselves eradicating preconceived notions of hostile temperament and leveling themselves, once again, with modern society.

Laughter is a fine medicine, but there is no greater laughter than when one is able to laugh at themselves, in the open, along with others. Four Lions is a rare, perfect demonstration, of this from the beginning as the friends are attempting to record a terrorist video with a toy gun. The procession is from there an analytical satire in which all but leaves the title's characters uncertain in the very motives that guide them. But so stubborn are their beliefs that the intent to employ themselves as anything but martyrs is tyrannical.