When Chris Morris makes things, there is a predictable pattern of events which follow. First, he finds a suitably controversial subject matter, for example drugs, paedophilia, or in this case, terrorism. Then he turns it into comedy. Then there is a tabloid backlash, radio phone-ins overheat, Channel 4 comes under fire, politicians decry it, then subsequently admit they’ve not seen it but say they are offended in “principle”. Yet, another predictable element of Morris’ work is that it is always absolutely hilarious. Four Lions is no exception. It tells the story of four suicide bombers in training, and their leader Omar’s (Riz Ahmed) attempts to keep his three somewhat simpler colleagues on track, towards a successful bomb-plot and matyrdom. As always, Morris undermines classic media perceptions and coverage of a touchy issue, but here his method is not to parody said media coverage to the point of being absurd, but instead to bypass the media almost entirely (except a few scenes where they are shown to be getting the wrong end of the stick), and concentrate on following the “reality” of a terrorist cell at work. What results is a film as funny, but perhaps relatively tame – by Morris’ standards. The humour is not derived from hysterical reporting of issues – he doesn’t play a talk-show host who lambasts a man for having “bad-aids” – but instead from the group dynamics at play in any group of people, made more absurd by their twistedly confused ideology. As Morris has pointed out, “A cell of terrorists is a bunch of blokes”, and the chemistry between the four ‘lions’ very much reflects that. Here perhaps one can clearly see the influence of the writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong (of Peep Show fame). For while controversial things crop up, the “eating a barbecued dog” moments in this film result, as in Peep Show, from farcical misunderstanding, rather than newsroom parody.
One thing for Morris has not changed though. As ever, nothing is sacred. That doesn’t mean he concentrates his fire on the most controversial areas, just for the hell of it. Rather, if something can be made fun of, it will be. New recruit to the group Hassan (Arsher Ali) grabs the gangs attention by pointing out the folly of an MP’s outlook, when he threatens to blow up a local community meeting with what transpire to be party poppers, observing that just because he was Muslim the MP “thought he was do it.” However, later Hassan is found to be ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ with a neighbour, nails and bomb material in full view. Pious Muslims are mocked by potential terrorist brothers, to the point where refusing to enter the same room as a women gets him into a water-pistol fight. Government marksmen get into fights at the London Marathon over whether a Wookie constitutes a bear. There are no heroes in this film, just a lot of people who are made to look foolish. The Daily Mail won’t like the fact that possibly the most sympathetic character, Omar, is the cell leader – but even his doctrine is revealed to be nonsense by the end. Any suggestion that it glorifies terrorism is grotesquely misplaced – in fact, surely the people who fearmonger and suggest that terrorism is the work of criminal masterminds, rather than people who think the best way to impersonate a woman is to place one’s hands on one’s face to cover your beard, are more guilty of glorifying terrorism.
Morris says that “the film is not racist, is not attacking a culture, but may just be suggesting that killing people is not a good idea.” That is something that most of us can agree on. But it leads to a curiously sad ending, where if the plot succeeds, then people (including the terrorists) have died for a twisted cause, but if it fails, then the people you’ve been following the whole film, their worlds, will have meant nothing. The fact that this paradox even figures in the conscience of anyone raises an important point. Morris manages to humanise figures who seems beyond hope. You may not like them, you hopefully won’t agree with them, but they are recognised to be human. And surely that is the first step towards attempting to approach the problem. Morris may be accused of trivialising terrorism, but in fact, after intensive research he has managed to cut beaneath the surface of the over-simplified picture presented by the media. And has he points out. “Once you’ve had your preconceptions flipped – and discovered it can be funny too, how could you not make a film about it?”
