ironhorse_iv
A comedy about jihad? Seems unlikely, right? And yet it kinda works. This movie isn't martyr dumb. It's a pretty smart funny comedy, directed by Chris Morris. The movie pokes fun at Islamic terrorists, by showcasing a group of British idiots trying to bomb the London Marathon event. This movie is very hard to watch, due to its disturbing subject matter. I don't recommended it to the normal viewer due to its very offensive, dark, and kinda crude nature. It might bring back bad memories of 9/11/01 or the 7/7/05 terrorist acts. It's even harder to sit now. At the time, 2010, the timing was alright to laugh at, since terrorists acts seem to die, down, a bit in the Western world, but now, as of this writing, it's kinda bad timing. 2013 saw the real-life terrorism bombing at the Boston Marathon and a year later, the British terrorist group known as the Beatles decapitated a lot of westerners for the extreme beliefs of the Islamic State. It's hardly a good time to make fun of them and not take them as a serious threat. Who knows? Maybe a few years into the future, Jihad satire can once again, seem funny. After all, timing is everything in comedy. It's critical. You don't want to make a film of bad taste. While, the movie is controversial, it doesn't go overboard with the War on Terror satire to the point that it became sicken to watch like certain films, such as 2007's Postal & 2008's An American Carol. The movie find the right balance between using, defusing humor to degrade Muslim terrorists, and giving social insight on how mismanaging, the government is on, pinpointing and separating Islamic extremists from the large amount of normal Muslims communities. This is British farce at its very best: using comedy to make a serious point. This film is also a powerful tool to prevent individuals from becoming suicide bombers, because it shows how hard, it is, to live up to the cultural sacred values of the cause. It shows how blind, people can become, when signing up for a cause, they don't really, understand. Most of the characters in the film, have no clue, what they're doing. The movie mainly focusing on three conflicting personalities. The first one is Omar (Riz Ahmed), a disheartened arrogant young man, who against the odds with the world over its persecution of Islam and its followers, yet he doesn't follow, any of the rules of Islam and often doesn't take anything, really that serious, and often falls back into his consumerism pop culture, Western lifestyle. Then, there is Barry (Nigel Lindsay), a white Islamic convert (Nigel Lindsay), who is a raging, paranoid self-hating extremist that use his brutish demeanor to demand a faux respect. Unlike Omar, he take everything, way too much serious and really isn't open to many of the other members more peaceful acts. The third lion is Waj (Kayvan Novak), a simpleton pawn, that taken advantage by the two stronger dominant personalities. By focusing on these three characters, 'Four Lions' shows the polar sides of terrorism; the way that influence can overtake both and strong and the weak. As these characters devise their plot against oppression, they struggle to explain themselves and thus struggle to convince themselves that what they are doing is really the right thing to do. While, characters like, the Hip-Hop rapper, Hassan, (Arsher Ali) & the over shy Faisal (Adeel Akhtar), had some of the funniest scenes in the film. I felt that, they weren't really needed. I really couldn't get into the characters, too much. It's not the fact, that they're terrorists, and pretty unlikeable people. It's the fact, that the Four Lions, somewhat had success in killing innocents people. While, the story is fiction. It's hard for watch, the movie to make light of handful of innocents people who were murdered in the film. Honestly, I thought the movie would have work better, if they all killed themselves, without killing one westerner person. It would had make, their mission seem more senseless. The acting was alright for the most part. The actors playing Omar and Barry were probably the best; while, the others actors playing the rest of the lions were a bit mediocre. I didn't like the portrayal of Omar's family. The wife and kid were so bland. It's weird that his family would be so open to having their father, died for a worthless cause. I found it to be a bit preposterous. Yes, families of terrorists are as "open-minded" for suicide, but you would think, it would be, funnier if they were strongly against it, playing off as a funny family sitcom conflict. It would had been brilliant. Anyways, I do like the cameo from Benedict Cumberbatch as the police hostage negotiator. I wish, he had a bigger role, than what he got. He would had, made this movie, a lot better, than it was. The movie works with a very open script. Most of the dialogue was made on the use of ad-libs, because of this, it leads to a fair share of dull moments and misfired jokes. One big complain about the film used of unfamiliar British slangs and a sprinkling of Arabic words. It really hindered, my understanding of what they were saying. I was deeply disappointed that the movie DVD, because it didn't have any hard of hearing English subtitles. The way, the movie is shot is a big problem. It felt, a little distortion, cheap, and blurry. I didn't love, the long zoom shots into the locations. It was unappealing. The ending was kinda rushed, but it works out, best. The action in the film was appealing. I just wish, the movie had better pacing. It was a little too long with the 102-minute run time. 20 minutes should had been cut off. Overall: It's an intelligent, edgy, risk-taking, and uncompromising political unapologetic comedy that is worth checking out. A must-watch.
fedor8
I was amazed what IMDb's storyline says about FL: "It shows that while terrorism is about ideology it can also be about idiots." Isn't that typical? Movie buffs are to the most part brainwashed, left-wing, white-guilt, capitalism-hating (yet McDonalds-munching) fantasy-land-lost low-IQ hypocrites whose massive confusion about politics and religion stems from daily intakes of harmful propaganda which consists of falsified history and twisted facts in all those preposterously self-righteous idiotic movies made by high-school dropouts and self-proclaimed intellectuals. Terrorism by its very definition is about idiots, i.e. idiocy – or perhaps someone can explain to me how blowing up innocent people randomly constitutes an actually ideology? If terrorism is an ideology, then Charles Manson and Ted Bundy were idealists as well. The only "ideology" I can think of that would fit that mind-set is called "psychopathy". Terrorism is about misfits looking to vent their personal frustrations onto a society (preferably a successful one that they envy and resent) that they decide is to blame for every single mistake, screw-up, and disappointment they'd ever experienced in their own failed lives. These are mostly narcissists and egomaniacs who believe that the world should spin around them and their every whim, and when they find out that it doesn't i.e. when all of their plans of a hot wife and great job fall to pieces, they turn to hating everything and everybody. Terrorism – as this wonderful comedy shows – is at its very core about sociopathic losers, misfits, cretins, sociopaths, sadists and nothing much else. (Sadists who seek an excuse for killing become terrorists, those that don't get labeled serial-killers.) Anti-intellectual left-wingers have a worrisome tendency to romanticize terrorism, simply because the Great Red Book advocates its use as the first step toward Utopia, hence their utter confusion about this actually fairly simple-to-understand modern phenomenon. It is modern because nowadays any coward can blow up dozens or more people simply because technology – conceived by non-terrorist nations ironically – allows him to.This movie is far from being just another goofy farce. The characters portrayed here are far from being cartoonish exaggerations far-removed from reality. Anyone who is even slightly familiar with the world of Islamic extremism and its bearded proponents will recognize many people that they know or have met as being very Omar-like or Barry-like, not to mention Waj-like. If the typical terrorist weren't so stupid, then British Intelligence wouldn't have succeeded in stopping no less than 40 terror plots since 2007. The inability of most (would-be) terrorists when it comes to inflicting any damage is a direct result of their incompetence which in turn can be linked to their enormous stupidity.FL is so right-on-the-money that it's even PROPHETIC in one segment; the scene in which Omar is said to have blown up a terrorist camp by accident. Something very similar happened a few years later when a would-be suicide-bomber blew up a whole bunch of his pals in a terrorist camp in Iraq (I believe). The incompetence, the utter confusion and the absolute absence of either logic or facts in this gang's every move and word is very typical of Islamic extremists. These four aren't some over-the-top fictional clown-versions of some much more intelligent or capable real four terrorists planning an attack. Not at all. We laugh at the four ninnies in spite of the serious subject matter, because ultimately stupidity is always funny, at least when presented well, with a good script and a solid cast; the guy playing Barry is the stand-out.Many people who hated this film (no doubt Islamic radicals and their bosom-buddies the Marxists) are the same individuals who failed to pick up the more subtle points; for example, the hypocrisy of a back-to-the-caves mentality exhibited by confused morons who at the same time enjoy all the conveniences of modern technology and western democracy. Omar's anti-consumerist/anti-capitalist rants are in stark contradiction to his own way of life. Omar makes fun of his women-enslaving Muslim buddy, and yet Omar is so thick and confused that he doesn't realize that he is actively pursuing the emergence of a society in which his wife would be treated like a slave. It is this "unconscious hypocrisy" that defines so many political and religious extremists, whatever their religious or political orientation may be. Also, Omar's devotion to his family is in stark contrast to his willingness to destroy/decimate OTHER people's families. This makes Omar not only a radical murdering fool, but also shows the egomania that is involved in such a character profile.It is a great relief that FL doesn't take the politically-correct route by portraying Islamic radicalization as a virus that only infects a tiny minority in western Islamic communities. Rather, the movie hints (more-or-less latently) that extremism is widespread. The Four Buffoons receive a lot of support from their friends, families, and many Muslims they bump into by chance (such as the restaurant where Waj stumbles). Far from it that most Muslims are "peace-loving moderates"; this is a falsehood that left-wing head-in-the-sand cowards spread because they are afraid of any sentiments that might challenge their fanatical belief in the success of their pet obsessions: diversity and multi-culturalism. Ironically enough, Islamic extremism is undermining exactly that multi-cultural dream that every liberal nurtures, and yet that same nincompoop is unwilling to face up to the realness of this threat and stubbornly lives in denial, refusing to acknowledge the vast dangers it brings, instead opting to blame the Right for everything.The only time FL gets politically-correct is when it shows the police and the common (English) man as being almost or equally as laughable/dumb as the terrorists themselves. This was done in order to protect the movie from accusations of racism – but also to get more laughs.
