Four Lions

This film's director, Chris Morris, is responsible for some of the most confronting comedy ever to grace the screen. Black barely begins to describe it. He was behind Brasseye, a current affairs spoof that caused a major controversy in the UK when it aired a special named “Paedogeddon”, a faked expose of paedophiles that featured Simon Pegg as a child molester locked up in stocks saying he wouldn't have sex with Morris's (fake) son because "he's not my type". His sketch series Jam was more often than not closer to horror than comedy, with one sketch about a man who jumped out of a first floor window forty times until he died (he thought it was better than jumping out a forty storey window and changing your mind halfway down). So going in, you know this film isn't going to pull any punches. What we witness are the misadventures of five incompetent wannabe suicide bombers as they screw up everything from shooting down a reconnaissance drone attacking their training camp to blowing themselves up. (There's a reason it's called Four Lions, not Five Lions...)

The idiocy of these wannabe martyrs is the core of the comedy and it’s why it works so well. Absolutely nobody in this film is sympathetic. They’re all idiots and we laugh at their incompetence. But the bonds and the tensions between the men feel real. Four Lions feels like an edited surveillance tape, so we get to observe rather than participate, and in allowing the characters some internal dignity, the comedy is able to be caustic and horrifying without feeling particularly mean. It’s a neat trick and it works very well.

There’s so much that’s funny here. There’s outtakes of the men’s martyrdom videos, Barry’s racism towards pretty much anyone, Fessel’s inept attempts at disguise and more. The highlight is an evilly funny family moment as Omar sits with his wife and son, riddled with doubt, and they encourage him to carry through the plan, to follow his heart and blow up the kaffirs. It’s the cliché warm happy family moment turned on its head.

It might be too black for some people, while others will be offended simply on principle but Four Lions really does follow through on what it initially promises, right up to the men detonating themselves in a variety of unfortunate ways. But even then Morris finds a way to make some truly awful and horrible things incredibly funny. He's walked a fine line here and once again proven that he really is a dark comic genius

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