DVDs in Review

Four Lions (Chris Morris, 2010)

Title: Four Lions (Chris Morris, 2010)

Release date: August 30 2010

Certificate: 15

Format: DVD, Blu-ray

DVD RRP: £19.99

Rating: 4/5

Reviewed by Dave Lancaster

Chris Morris has been cutting through the ridiculousness of PC society for years on the small screen with excellent satirical current affairs TV shows ‘The Day Today’ and ‘Brass Eye’, but in his first film as a director and writer, he’s more focussed, tackling just one risqué central subject – suicide bombers.

An interview with the Sunday Times quoted Morris as saying this film was akin to ‘Dad’s Army’ whereby the Nazi’s influence was depicted as both fearful and ridiculous, resulting in exaggerated actions and scenarios. This is a good way of entering ‘Four Lions’ – a film which is as close to the bone as it is blackly hilarious.

The plot concerns four Jihads living in Britain who have assimilated themselves into society but are tied to their extreme religious beliefs and terrorist connections. In effect, that are puppets but instead of having their strings pulled by a higher power, they’re left to their own devices.

Their plan is to suicide strategically picked UK targets (one of their initial, vetoed, selections was Boots the chemists) after being trained up and testing their weapons (which allows for a pigeon to meet its demise in a cloud of smoke). Morris wisely doesn’t paint these four protagonists as buffoons; instead they’re just misguided and lacking effective planning to see their plans through to a successful completion.

What Morris does do is round out his characters as human individuals – even in films like ‘The Hurt Locker’ which directly relate to suicide bombers, the characters themselves are fleeting, painted as either pure evil or petrified components of a much larger system.

This is more like ‘Dr Strangelove’, getting into the ridiculous actions behind the political motivations. It makes the comedy funnier and the drama more hard-hitting, which when backed with an engaging budget documentary style, offers a welcoming start point for what many would consider an impenetrable subject for comedy.