Four Lions

by

So this is a comedy about suicide bombers? That was the premise – which seemed farfetched. But the image on the left shows an example: a “test” suicide bomb on a crow. Needless to say the test succeeds, and there is a cloud of black feathers.

So, yes, it was a comedy – but that particular dark British comedy. There are four Muslims in a group, and they are determined to be suicide bombers. They practice for their suicide video – at one point, the subject gets up to look in the camera to see what is wrong with his pose. And later on, Omar is working on the videos at home at the kitchen table as his wife and son look on.

Barry is the white convert, and the most Muslim of them all.  He is a spokesman at conferences. Omar is the brains of the operation, with wife and child, and relatives in Pakistan.  His friend is Waj, who lets Omar do the thinking for him. The pair of them go to Pakistan for a training stint, but their incompetence gets them sent back home in a hurry.

They end up preparing their explosives in the kitchen of a rental apartment.  After a neighbor obliviously hangs out in the apartment, they decide to move their bombs, but the explosive is unstable, and detonate if dropped.  One of the group goes the back way through a field, and trips over a sheep, blowing up himself and the sheep.  The others debate whether this counts as jihad (entitling him to paradise) or not.  In the end they decide it counts, as an attack on the enemy’s food supply.  This is an example of the type of humor – probably not to everyone’s taste.