Advocates of Chris Morris’ comedy know that he loves controversy. It’s practically where he lives. But not even his most ardent fans believed he would tackle the thorny issue of terrorism and play it for laughs. But since his resume reads like a what’s-what of hot-button issues (paedophilia, politics, incest, drugs etc) it’s not completely out of the blue.
One of Britain’s most cult comedians, Morris broke out from radio with his hilarious TV shows On The Hour, The Day Today and Brass Eye. The latter in particular carved a niche for him in terms of cutting edge satire and many expected him to launch into the comedy stratosphere like his contemporaries Steve Coogan and Armando Iannucci. But instead he created his most challenging work, Jam, and then mostly shied away from the public eye, only appearing in one off’s like The IT Crowd and his first film, the short My Wrongs 8245–8249 & 117.
Four Lions is Morris’ first foray into feature film directing and it’s a manifesto of sorts. Rather than an attack on fundamentalism or looking at reasons why young people find suicide bombing so alluring, it focuses its energy on pissing people off by making them laugh. It revolves around four young Muslims who become radicalised and make the decision to be suicide bombers.
The reported three years that Morris spent researching this project were clearly put to good use, as this is a convincing portrayal of young Muslim men, ordinary and confused, stumbling into something that they are not equipped for. Somehow, Morris manages to make these characters sympathetic as he shows what he calls, “the Dad’s Army side to terrorism”.
Make no mistake; Four Lions is a funny film. No matter the tricky subject matter, it’s the human characters that provide the humour for the film, as they attempt to bumble and blunder their way to Allah. The only drawback would be that in terms of satire, Four Lions is not as probing and well-delivered as some of his previous work, in particular the sublime Brass Eye. But this is looking for a great film when Lions is merely a very good film.
Go in with an open mind and you never know, you might be blown away…..
……sorry.
