Four Lions (2010) – 3/5

Lions and lambs and laughter

„Four Lions“ is a co-production between the United Kingdom and France from 2010, so this one is over a decade old now already and perhaps also over 15 years old if it takes you a little longer to get here and read this review of mine. I am still not really sure where the French component stems from, but oh well. It runs for slightly over 1.5 hours and this includes already the closing credits, which means that here we do not have a particularly long film. The language is mostly English, even if here and there you will also hear very brief segments of other languages. The man mostly in charge of the production here was Christopher Morris and he won the second BAFTA of his career for this movie. He seems to be a man of many talents as he has also acted a lot throughout his career, but I am indeed a bit surprised to see that he has not been a too prolific filmmaker (or television program maker) apparently since the success of this movie we got here. His two co-writers are Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong. Bain is also a BAFTA winner and Armstrong was even nominated for an Oscar for „In the Loop“ pretty much the same time that this film here came out. He also worked on other successful projects and one of those would be „Succession“. As for the cast, you will not find a huge amount of really famous actors. Riz Ahmed is probably the closest this film has to a lead and he is an Oscar winner now too, sadly for his embarrassing well let’s call it a music video. He is surely much more known today than he was back then. Same is certainly also true for Benedict Cumberbatch who plays a minor character towards the end of the film. Still fairly surprising for me to see him included here as I did not check the cast list before. This was of course before his massive stardom and before becoming a Hollywood A-lister with several Oscar nominations under his belt.

My by far favorite performance here, however, came from Nigel Lindsay who played the character of Barry or al-Britani how he named himself after converting to Islam. Literally every single scene he had was a riot or actually almost every single line he had was a riot. No matter if we are talking about how he decides to swallow a little object, how he then comes through with his head again to annoy the others, how he actually is part of a panel that was referenced before that or how he gets to wear the coolest costume in the end, namely a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, everything about this character was awesome and nice to watch and I am not sure if I had given the film a positive recommendation if Lindsay had not been part of the cast here. Really nailed the character comedy-wise. Great job from the actor and makes me almost a bit sad then to see he has not really starred in any other big project. A great deal of television work and good for him, but „Four Lions“ is easily his most known work and this is probably not gonna change anymore. I will spare you the rest of the cast, but you can check out the names yourself if you are curious. Here and there, I even had a difficult time to keep them apart. They were fairly similar at times if we ignore the moments like when one character is enjoying Toploader’s „Dancing in the Moonlight“ with one of the not too many female characters. This song is heard more than once. I will not object. It is a truly catchy number. If we take a look at 95% of the film, it is all about the comedy. I am sure that radical Muslims must have hated it although the probably did not even watch. The ending then brings us back to reality and lets us ask if it is appropriate that we laughed so much throughout the film because it becomes obvious again they are terrorists and what they have in mind and given how amateurish they all, except Ahmed’s character, looked before that, it was quite a surprise that they actually managed to kill people, even if it was not really their achievement.

My favorite character killed one other man when that one tried to save his life. Another character dies inside a restaurant or something when the cops mistake his hostage for the terrorist. It is not clear if maybe some police officers or whatever they were are killed as well and Ahmed’s character in the end really walks into the pharmacy and kills himself and probably a few others too. But yeah, before this escalation at the end, it is really all about the comedy. You can mention the scene how one of the gang dies before that already and how the rest discuss if killing sheep and thus having an impact on the food industry will also get you to Allah. You can mention the scene early on when they talk about swallowing the SIM card, so the police cannot find them. You can mention the scene in which characters talk about chickens and rabbits. I actually wonder if this is where Til Schweiger found the name inspiration for his film later on. I would not be surprised if he in a way „stole“ it from this film we have here, even if the two films (plus the sequel) of course have nothing else in common. There are so many decent moments of dark comedy in here that it is impossible for me to mention them all. I will just keep going a bit though down the brainstorming route about what I remember: The panel scene I already mentioned. Now that was rough and one of the showiest moments of the film what the guy with the confetti does there in the audience. Maybe the best moment in terms of laughter was then when we see the security folks arrive. I was so surprised nobody from the audience left the room. I mean the one in the movie, not the one in the theater. Okay, one of the panelists was taking cover, but still. I think the reaction in real life would have been completely different.

There were actually also 100% serious inclusions in here too like the other terrorist group whose place gets raided before they can do anything. But our „heroes“ stay safe. The London marathon is the big occasion. There we also see the incompetence of the cops when one of them shoots a runner in a big costume that was not one of the terrorists and I think he shot him with an actual bullet and not a tranquilizer. The most incompetent moment for the police force was then of course the ending when they shoot the wrong guy in the restaurant (after Cumberbatch is done talking to the terrorist about buttocks) and, as you would expect, the police take no responsibility for this error at the very end. We see that during a press conference when the film is pretty much over. What else? Oh yeah, puffins are included in the most creative manner here. I will not go into detail the, you have to experience it yourself. I am not talking about the actual birds, but they kinda represent the group members and one cares for his color it was I think even. Maybe a good thing for the puffins that they are not actually included here from a wildlife or pet perspective because pretty much all the animals that are part of this movie do not manage to stay alive. I already mentioned the sheep, okay all the other sheep did stay alive, and then there is of course also the crow you see on the film poster on imdb. I am not sure if there are other posters, probably, but this one shows us the bird with a bomb attached to it. Summarizes the absurdity of all of this in a nice way. I watched this film on the occasion of a British film retrospective and here and there I even felt it was a great film and deserved one star more (4/5) or two (8/10), but the exact ending did not win me over enough to staying with that rating. The thumbs-up and positive recommendation were really never in doubt though.

I laughed a lot during these over 90 minutes. This was thanks to all the scenes I already mentioned, but also for example the scene in which Lindsay’s character records a test video in which he confesses a terrorist act and then the others show up, especially Ahmed’s character, and talk about how it makes absolutely no sense because al-Britani wants to put the blame on others to created hatred among the Muslim community when it is really them who committed the acts of violence. A bit of a plan like Kristallnacht many decades ago, which is also known of course as the Night of Broken Glass. So this scene and also Lindsay’s character’s reactions there to being exposed show us how he did not think through his own plan even and that they are all fools indeed. The punching-himself parallel also made total sense, even if it was not among the funniest moments of the film for me. The fact that Ahmed’s character is far above everybody else here in terms of intelligence comes through in one of the film’s best pieces of writing, namely when he talks to one of the others and the latter is having doubts and Ahmed’s character there elaborates on the what the head wants and what the heart wants. Nicely written and nicely acted. I am still not getting over his short film that won him the Oscar. I mean with a film like „Four Lions“ in his body of work, I think he was still in his 20s when this got made, he should know so much better, but oh well, I guess liberal Hollywood needs to be pleased and he was more than ready to do the job. Let him sink a lot in my appreciation though. I liked him before that. But now back to this film here: There is not too much to say anyway. Let me end the review again by mentioning the very brief funny moment when Lindsay’s character talks briefly to a woman pushing a buggy who he suspects is an agent surveilling the characters at the center of the story. Blink and you will miss this moment, but it was as funny as could be. Enough now, you should go and watch the film yourself and probably you will also never see clown costumes the same afterwards. „Four Lions“ deserves to be checked out and I myself kept thinking of the famous football song here „Three Lions“ (on the shirt) that happened quite some time before this film, but it is such a catchy tune that it got back into my head immediately again. That is really all now.