Four Lions: Difference between revisions

* [[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.

** Malcolm Storge MP looks suspiciously like [[The Thick of It|Julius Nicholson MP]]

** Alex is the loan shark from ''[[Black Books]]''

* [[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. {{spoiler|One doesn't make it to the Title Drop, however}}.

* [[Oh Crap]]: [http://www.libertasfilmmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Four-Lions-04345.jpg Two of the three lions present] who {{spoiler|witness Feisal's death}}. 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.

* [[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 "[http://www.four-lions.co.uk/downloads/funny_poster.jpg Funny]" about <s>seven</s> fifteen times.

** A further subversion in the poster fine print: "If you're reading this, find out what's wrong with you."

** 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 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uglk7QyxKs pointed out] that this aspect of his character actually has a basis in a number of real life terrorists.

* [[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.

* [[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, [[Hypocritical Humor|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.