The Four Lions (2010)
“Spark plugs were invented by Jews to control global transportation.”
Directed by: Christopher Morris
Written by: Jesse Armstrong/Sam Bain/Christopher Morris/Simon Blackwell
I call a Jihad on terrible Hollywood movies.
HALL PASS–This could be another terrible excuse to have Owen Wilson be a dork. Or it could be…well, completely lame. There were a few funny spots in the preview, but it looks like crap, honestly.
BLACK SWAN–Aronofsky is at it again, and I’m happy about it. I’ve heard nothing but great things about this movie and I can’t wait to see it, if only because it’s Natalie Portman being awesome and dark. Yes, it’s ballet, but whatever. I can deal.
RARE EXPORTS–Seen it, and so should you. Best (and darkest) Christmas movie of the year.
JUST GO WITH IT–Adam Sandler (wait for it) is a ladies man who falls for a pretty young lady. His best friend (Jennifer Aniston) tries to help him, but they just keep getting more and more wrapped up in lies. It looks like it could be funny, but incredibly frustrating. JUST TELL THE DAMN TRUTH! I know how the movie ends (one of two ways), but there’s a part of me that still wants to check it out on video. We’ll see.
Now, how ’bout those Lions?!
Terrorism is a terrible thing. It’s fueled by anger and misguided “revenge,” usually for something that the participants aren’t really sure of anymore.
This, of course, is why it’s ripe for parody.
The Four Lions are five friends who doing their best to be terrorists. Two of them go to the Middle East to be trained, but they screw up and are sent back home to London. Eventually they find ways to screw up there, too.
What follows is a hilarious wake-up call: terrorists are just as stupid and screwed up as everyone else. They just have these fucking insane ideals that make them do fucking insane things.
You see, director Christopher Morris and his writers make these guys absolutely human (if a bit dumber than your average human). Omar (Riz Ahmed), the leader, is the smartest and the most driven. But he’s also a loving family man. His relationship with his wife is amazing and he loves his son immensely. But DAMN, does he want to kill himself for the cause. (His re-writing of The Lion King as a Jihadist parable is pretty amazing.)
Basically, with Omar and his family, Morris turns Jihad into a sit-com convention. At one point, when Omar says that he’s rethinking suicide, his wife says, “You were more fun when you were going to blow yourself up.” Omar’s brother is a peaceful fundamentalist who can’t be in the same room with a woman and abhors guns and violence. Of course, he’s painted as the most boring character in the movie.
All of this sounds as if it’s glorifying Jihad, but that’s not true at all. It’s making it look stupid and worthless. These guys have these grand ideas, but they all add up to nothing in the end. Nothing they do can make them seem like heroes to anyone. They just look like fucking jackasses.
It’s a ballsy freakin’ movie that would never be made in America. We’re all so scared of our own shadows that a movie like this would be put so far on the back burner that no one would ever even hear that there was a script called The Four Lions.
That’s why I’m glad that this is the first film released under the banner “Drafthouse Films.” The Alamo Drafthouse has finally become a part of the system and is handling the domestic distribution of the film and it makes perfect sense that this is their first. It’s incredibly subversive, smart and funny. I was proud to give them my money…even if it was over $9.
