Four Lions; four reasons Osama bin Laden will fail

Four Lions
Director Chris Morris
Starring: Riz Ahmed, Nigel Lindsay, Kayvan Noak and Adeel Akhtar

In New Zealand cinemas from October 21

“Four Lions,” a film set in a northern English city gives us an insight into the comical and tragic lives of four Muslim men who have a plan to deal a blow to the West by organising a string of suicide bombings.

The film is supposed to be a comedy but it raises some interesting ethical questions for Muslims engaged in jihad. If in the course of doing the will of Allah one blows oneself up but fails to kill anyone else does that count as some sort of own goal. Does it mean that you are doomed to hell for eternity rather than going to Heaven and suffering the demands of 64 virgins?

There is an even more disturbing question. If one accidently blows up Osama bin Laden, does that also mean exile to the fires or does God bless you for following the fatwas issued by Presidents Bush and Obama.

The leader of the four would-be martyrs Omar (Riz Ahmed) is concerned about the treatment of Muslims around the works and decides to be a true jihadist striving to be chosen for a suicide mission.

He is aided or rather hampered by his brother Waj (Kayvan Novak) who gives stupidity a bad name.

The other conspirators include the convert Barry (Nigel Lindsay) who appears to be using Islam as an alternative route to nihilism, and Hassan (Rasher Ali) who is more concerned about making a good rapper style terrorist video.

Then there the slightly unsound Faisal (Adeel Akhtar), the bomb maker who trains birds to fly with bombs attached to them and who manages to blow himself up.
Omar and Waj go to a terrorist training camp in Pakistan where they appear to accidently kill Osama bin Laden.

After returning to the UK and some tentative starts at being terrorists they decide to blow themselves up during the London Marathon and dress up as cartoon characters to avoid drawing attention to themselves.

Much of the time the film is reminiscent of the Peoples Front of Judea scene in “Life of Brian” and owes quite a lot to Monty Python as well as the Marx Brothers.

There is some beautifully crafted dialogue with politics, history and religion tangled together in muddled observations about the world. One of the characters declaring that Jews having invented GPS (or was it spark plugs) to control world traffic.

It is a film which is not really anti-Islam; rather it shows how the mindless stupidity of youth mixed with a bit of misplaced fervor can lead to disastrous outcomes. If these guys hadn’t decided to be jihadists they would have become football hooligans.

The film which was initially rejected by the BBC has had successful appearance at festival around the worlds including the Bradford Film Festival.