Four Lions



""Rubber dinghy rapids, bro!""

The debut feature film directed by Chris Morris, and written by Morris in collaboration with Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain of Peep Show fame. It's a comedy of the type where a bunch of ordinary blokes, none of them the very sharpest of minds, take on a task bigger than themselves. Similar to The Full Monty, in a funny way. Except that they want to be Islamist suicide bombers.

This film provides examples of:
""I used to be in a band... until all the birds fell off the roof.""
 * Actual Pacifist: As part of the deconstruction of Acceptable Religious Targets, Omar's fundamentalist Muslim brother Ahmed tries to talk him out of doing violence, which he rightly suspects he's planning. Naturally, the authorities see him as the terrorist mastermind behind it and are threatening him with torture at the end. Ahmed seems to be a more fundamentalist Muslim than Omar,ironically, refusing to enter the same room with Omar's wife and in Islamic garb everywhere he goes, whereas Omar wears Western-style clothes.
 * All for Nothing:
 * Angrish:
 * "FUCK MINI BABYBEL!"
 * We also get an impressive stint of angry Urdu: "these useless fuck-my-auntie-from-a-standing-position pyjama-wearing cockerel dicks"
 * Ax Crazy: Barry is clearly not very stable, and one gets the impression that he's turned to radical Islam largely because it gives him an excuse to be violent.
 * Baa Bomb:
 * Black Comedy: The blackest.
 * Blatant Lies: "That bag's full of... really fragile... boots."
 * Bloody Hilarious:
 * Brick Joke: At the training camp, Waj and Omar try to use a rocket launcher to destroy a UAV, only for it to fire backwards.
 * British Accents: A nice smattering of various northern accents and a few London ones.
 * Chekhov's Skill: Rather, Chekhov's Obnoxious Habit that Barry displays early on his tendency to eat inedible objects, either when he can't get his way or as part of his idiotic self-flagellation obsession (otherwise involving beans or urine).
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Alice.

""Islam is cracking up! We got women talking back! We got people playing stringed instruments! It's the end of days.""
 * Cluster F-Bomb: There's a lot of swearing in general, but Omar's Urdu rants are a particular highlight.
 * Completely Missing the Point: Waj's Chicken Cottage rant, Barry asking Feisal to "show me the voice"... the wannabe Jihadists seem unable to agree on what the point actually is. Even Omar, the guy with the most gumption out of the lot of them, fails to come up with a point whilst telling his son about his plans.
 * Cower Power: Malcolm Storge MP hiding under the table when a would-be suicide bomber threatens an attack.
 * Crapsack World: Essentially every character is either an idiot, crazy or both.
 * Double Entendre:
 * The Lions refer to each other as 'bro' constantly, and this serves both as a deep acknowledgment of their ties as Jihadists... and as a general, modern, completely vernacular form of Anglophone address.
 * "Brother" is also the common form of address between fellow Muslim men, extremist or not.
 * When they're at the van suiting up before
 * Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Very successfully averted.
 * Downer Ending
 * Driven to Suicide:
 * Dumb Muscle: Waj. Noticeably bigger than his cohorts, manhandles on Omar's command, one functioning brain cell.
 * Epic Fail: But their fail is our win.
 * Even Evil Has Standards: Played with bizarrely - Omar is heading a terrorist plot to kill who-knows-how-many innocent people, but he still tries to take the moral high ground over his brother for "locking women in a cupboard."
 * Faux Yay: "We're going to get down to some gay business". They're not.
 * Foreshadowing: Barry eating his SIM card, talking about blowing up a pharmacy.
 * Gratuitous English: Omar's Pakistani uncle speaks in Urdu but randomly throws in bits of English when he's ranting to Omar and Waj.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: Julia Davis and Kevin Eldon, who have appeared in several other Chris Morris projects
 * Malcolm Storge MP looks suspiciously like Julius Nicholson MP
 * Alex is the loan shark from Black Books
 * Sherlock negotiates for the police in his spare time?
 * Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Barry's justification for Jihad.

""I told you... it was a knee!"
 * Hypocritical Humour:
 * Omar rails against western culture, saying that it's obsessed with technology, escapism and other nonsense. However, the jihadists all make repeated references to how much they enjoy things like Xbox video games, English theme parks, Disney films, and even Rambo.
 * The jihadists are all determined to kill unbelievers, but Barry starts insisting that they target a mosque and blame it on unbelievers, hoping this will radicalize moderate Muslims. Later, Waj holds a restaurant full of Muslims hostage. One of them even points out that Waj's bomb won't kill any unbelievers.
 * The jihadists all think of themselves as champions of Islam, when none of them seem to be particularly religious. Hassan admits that he rarely goes to mosque, and Barry outright states that it's a waste of time, since he sees everyone in there as idiots and sellouts. Waj doesn't seem to understand the concept of praying to Mecca. Omar's family is much less conservative than his deeply religious brother, and they laugh off his religious arguments. Even Faisal, the most devout of the group, is only obeying laws that his father tells him to obey (and his father is crazy).
 * I Have This Friend: In this case Omar's friend is called Simba.
 * Initiation Ceremony: Barry makes Hassan insert a bean into his penis and Waj piss into his own mouth.
 * Insane Troll Logic:
 * Barry suggests bombing a mosque to radicalize the moderates and incite revolution. Omar likens it to punching yourself in a street fight. Barry counters that you could punch yourself in the face to make yourself "go mental" and win the fight. Omar goads him into trying it, and Barry hits himself in the nose. Omar then mocks him for wiping the blood away, as this represents the jihadists that will be inspired by the mosque bombing, and he's wiping out the revolution...
 * Barry starts recording a video taking credit for the planned bombing of a mosque that he intends to blame on unbelievers.
 * Barry asserts, "You cannot win an argument just by being right." Even Waj points out the lack of logic in that one.
 * When a police sniper tells his partner that the person in a Wookie costume he shot wasn't the target, the second sniper responds, "It must have been the target, because I shot it" (with the same logic repeated by Martin Storge MP when defending the police and the government's failure to prevent the attack at the end of the film; "as I understand it, the police shot the right man, but the wrong man exploded")
 * Kick the Dog: "YOU BROKE THE CHICKEN'S BEAK!"
 * London Doubling: Some of the London scenes are Sheffield city centre.  looks like the corner of Hawley Street and Campo Lane. Also, while the exterior of Meadowhall is shown, its interior is mostly played by another Sheffield shopping centre, Crystal Peaks.
 * Losing Your Head: Feisal, literally and metaphorically; Hassan fails to clean up the Ludicrous Gibs properly and Feisal's head is found by the police.

"It was a head! It was obviously a head!"

"It had a hinge!""

""He'll be in heaven before his head hits the ceiling!""
 * Man Child: Waj brings a toy gun to the shooting of his Jihad video, reads children's books, and his conception of the afterlife is that of a theme park ride. To a smaller degree, the rest of the protagonists are all crushingly naive. Conversely, Omar's son is shown to be pretty sharp when Omar tries to justify suicide bombing by way of The Lion King.
 * Martyrdom Culture: Deconstructed, with idiocy.


 * Mistaken for Gay: How they get rid of Alice, who apparently doesn't like gay people.
 * Mistaken for Terrorist: Played with several times.
 * Mood Dissonance: Every other scene
 * Mood Whiplash: Many times - it's by Chris Morris, fer chrissakes.
 * The Neidermeyer: Barry.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The poor unwitting first-aider who comes to Barry's aid, and the police who
 * Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: An attempt to take out a US UAV ends up.
 * Nitro Express: The five wannabe mujahideen have to transport home-made explosives. They try to drive carefully, but hit a tree. They then have to do a very silly run the rest of the way.
 * No Animals Were Harmed: None except the Baa Bomb.
 * No Except Yes: "It's not a cupboard! It's... it's a small room."
 * Non-Indicative Name: The film is called Four Lions, but there are five main jihadists in the film..
 * Noodle Implements: *pulls out a weetabix*: "We know a lot more than you think!"
 * Oh Crap: Two of the three lions present who . The other is too stupid to immediately comprehend what's happened.
 * Oop North: Set and filmed mostly in Sheffield. Omar works as a security guard at Meadowhall. The hospital scene is the main entrance of the Northern General Hospital.
 * Only Sane Man: Omar. And he's not especially bright.
 * Played for Laughs: Stupid idiots killing themselves for a cause they don't understand? Innocent civilians being murdered? Cruelty to sheep? Check, check and check.
 * Police Are Useless: Jury is still out on whether they're more or less incompetent than the suicide bombers but
 * Quote Mine: Intentionally invoked and subverted with some of the movie posters. Instead of the usual three-word out-of-context reviews from each of the main national papers, they just show the word "Funny" about seven fifteen times.
 * A further subversion in the poster fine print: "If you're reading this, find out what's wrong with you."
 * Shout-Out:
 * Debatable, but the sequence with the  reminded some viewers of the controversy over the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes.
 * Hasan Malik's name may be a particularly dark one to Nidal Malik Hasan, who was responsible for the 2009 Ft. Hood shooting.
 * Reality Is Unrealistic: A recurring criticism of the film is that the portrayal of Omar's family as loving and stable is an unconvincing, heavy-handed attempt to humanize a would-be suicide bomber. Morris has pointed out that this aspect of his character actually has a basis in a number of real life terrorists.
 * It's pretty ironic, and chilling, seeing Omar at home with his wife Sofia, both of them apparently far more "Western" than his brother, yet he's the one arguing against violence, while they're planning it.
 * Senseless Sacrifice: Explored inside-out in hilarious/shocking fashion.
 * Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb: Literally, and delivered in person.
 * Stupid Crooks: Stupid terrorists, in this instance.
 * Surrounded By Idiots: Omar. Although he's not exactly the sharpest nail in the bag either.
 * Ted Baxter: Barry
 * Terrorists Without a Cause: Waj's response to being asked what his demands are by a police negotiator - "I... I don't think I have any..."
 * Title Drop: At the beginning of the final act.
 * Too Dumb to Live: All of the conspirators are this to some degree.
 * Torture Cellar:
 * Trailers Always Spoil:
 * Undignified Death: Practically all of them.
 * Villain Protagonist: The Lions themselves, as a sympathetic portrayal of Jihadists.
 * The War On Terror: Terror Alert Level: Red.
 * Women Are Wiser: Suggested, but ultimately averted. Omar's wife seems like a down-to-earth woman, but as the film progresses, we see that she's completely onboard with Omar's plan to kill himself, and doesn't seem to have the slightest problem with him leaving her a widow with a young son. Critics found this to be unrealistic, but the makers asserted that real terrorists often have remarkably stable home lives.
 * X Meets Y: It's 24 Meets The Lady Killers Meets Dads Army Meets Paradise Now. With a layer of Three Stooges frosting.
 * Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The Lions never refer to themselves or think of themselves as "Terrorists" and actually view themselves as holy warriors fighting the evils of Western Imperialism. More often than not, they refer to themselves as "Jihadists", which is taken from the translation of the word "Jihad" as "struggle". On the other hand, other rebel groups that employ similar violent tactics against British society, which the Lions are planning, are referred to as "terrorists" by the Lions. Specifically, when Feisal mentions his "IRA voice" to Barry, Barry chastises him for using a "terrorist" voice which could blow their cover.