Four Lions

The movie ”Four Lions” is a British dark comedy from 2010. It is about a group of radicalized young men, who are under the impression that if you die fulfilling a religious commandment, you will enter paradise and be rewarded with 72 vir-gins.

The group consists of Omar, the leader, who is disillusioned about the treatment of Muslims around the world and is determined to become a martyr. The easily manipulated and confused Waj, who is intrigued by the idea, jumps on the wag-on. Faisal, the odd man out, but a respected member of the group. Then there is Barry, who also goes by the name Azzam al-Britanni, a white Islamic convert and self-appointed leader (in his own world). While Omar and Waj are participating in a terrorist training camp in Pakistan, Barry recruits a fifth member to their group, Hassan: A young and fun teenager, who seeks to become a part of some-thing greater. The trip to Pakistan ends in disaster and Omar and Waj return to England. As the pieces start falling in to place, and their competing ideologies clash, a human side of them appears and they begin to doubt and regret their in-tentions and actions. But perhaps it is too late?

The relationship between the characters changes from person to person as they are all ranked differently in the group. At the top of the hierarchy is Omar, and Waj is his follower. The relationship between Waj and Omar is special because they depend on each other, and their strong bond is evident. Omar chooeses Waj as his sidekick and they travel to Pakistan together. In the end Omar does every-thing in his power to prevent Waj from committing suicide, because he has real-izes how wrong it is, and when he fails to do so, he does not hesitate to meet the same fate to join his fellow lion.

Even though Omar is the leader of the group, the decisions taken by the group are who Waj decides to side with, because without followers a leader is just a guy taking a walk. Further down the hierarchy is Barry. Barry is a Caucasian Brit who converted to Islam. He desperately wants to be the leader of the group, and disregards and disrespects Omar in every way possible. To become the leader of the group, he abuses and manipulates the rest of the group in to becoming his followers. At the bottom of the hierarchy are Faisal and Hassan who are both fol-lowers (of Barry primarily due to his manipulation). The difference between their ranks in the hierarchy is that Faisal is a respected member of the group, while Hassan is not.
While the terrorist attack in the end of the movie is scripted and is handled with humor to a degree where it seems unrealistic, terrorism does occur in real life. A recent terror attack occurs in Paris on the morning of January 7th 2015, when two masked gunmen armed with assault rifles and other weapons force their way in to the offices of Charlie Hebdo. Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical weekly magazine featuring cartoons, reports, and jokes and compared to “Four Lions”, the magazine also handles serious subjects with humor and satire. It has attract-ed attention for its controversial depictions of the prophet Muhammad. In the end this proves to be fatal for them. The gunmen kill 11 people and injure anoth-er 11 people. The gunmen are later identified as Cherif and Said Kouachi. Similar to the Kouachi brothers, the lions are also philosophically and politically moti-vated to commit the crimes. In the movie, it is evident that the lions are not pleased with the treatment of Muslims around the world, especially when Barry participates in a debate regarding how Muslims are viewed in today’s society. The backgrounds of the attackers are similar to each other, as they are all Mus-lims and believe that performing these acts will lead to them gaining martyr sta-tus.

Why is “Four Lions” handling a serious subject like terrorism with humor and satire? To give a short characterization of the lions in the movie, they are just a bunch of religiously confused losers, who are looking for something to blow up. There is a scene in which the group catches Hassan with Alice in the room filled with chemicals and materials for their bombs: Oblivious to her surround-ings, they convince Alice that they are gay and that they have “got to get down to some gay business” as a cover up for their real plans.
There is also a scene in which Omar’s brother refuses to be in the same room as Omar’s wife and it ends with a water pistol fight.
The use of humor brings out the best in all the characters and keeps the audience entertained, but is it too provocative? “Four Lions” is less about religion and more about the people we know from real life, who are blinded by their stupidity and are obsessed with reaching their goals. [But what are their goals again?] The director of the movie uses the way of humor to handle a sensitive subject with-out it becoming too controversial. By using humor, “Four Lions” emphasizes the necessity of having fun and still having humor even when the world has lost it.

Focusing on the multicultural aspect of the movie, the five men are not accepting towards diversity. In the scene in which Barry participates in a debate, Hassan makes a scene and bursts out “You think we’re all bombers, don’t you?” He then proceeds to unzip his jacket and reveals something that looks like bombs. He pulls the strings and the people in the room scream and panic just to find that is was actually just confetti popping out. He then says: “What, just because I’m Mus-lim, you thought it was real?” This scene clearly shows how disillusioned they are when it comes to their perception of how Muslims are treated in the western civilization and how rejecting they are. The other “debaters” actively try to con-vince Barry otherwise, but he either brushes them off or complains even more. This is what can happen, when people do not try to integrate in to society, even if they were born and raised there, like Barry. Even though some of the lions seem somewhat normal, it is obvious that they are not trying to fit in to society but ra-ther hiding and blending in to British society to seem normal even if they are not. That is why people like Omar’s co-worker does not suspect anything or believes that he is a terrorist after the attacks.

The movie “Four Lions” presents five terrorists as what they are: regular human beings. The whole point of the movie was to humanize the terrorists and experi-ence what kind of emotions and experiences they go through. Some of them ac-tually believe, that they are doing the right thing by killing other people this way, and how exactly are we supposed to deal with that? This movie shows us suicide bombers from a whole new perspective and makes us realize, that they are also human beings. It also brings attention to the consequences to the whole society when a group of people insists on not integrating. They immediately fall in to the “victim mentality” that Tariq Ramadan describes in his text “You can’t go home again” . He describes some Muslims as extremists who tend to argue that “You are more Muslim, when you’re against the West” and it seems that the five lions share the same mentality. But is that an open invitation to bomb the people of the West? Perhaps it is in their minds, opposed to what we believe in. Who is right? We do not know because in the end we are only humans.