‘Four lions’ is a Chris Morris comedy based around a group of 5 British jihadists that try to make their dreams become reality by martyring themselves for ‘the greater good’, led by Omar the leader of the group and main character we follow that seems to be the only ‘normal’ one of the group which could be seen to be potentially worrying as the smartest and most sensible character is the one that wants to murder innocent people. We meet Waj who is Omar’s very dim right hand man who is portrayed as a very childlike and susceptible character that doesn’t really seem to grasp the concept of what martyring yourself actually is, referring to the afterlife as ‘Alton Towers: Rubber Dingy Rapids’. We then meet Barry, the only white British converted Muslim who plays a key role in making the film not racist as he seems to be the most radical out of the group with his idea to blow up the Mosque, he is seen to not know much (if anything) about their cause as if he has just jumped on the bandwagon for attention and wants to run things. We meet Faisal who despite being a complete and utter imbecile is the one that makes the bombs and meets his end by them in a hilarious way early in the ‘heroes’ quest, which played a key role in showing the other central characters just what they were preparing themselves for and finally Hassan who is a young rapper that joins the group for the glory and not for the cause.
Despite each characters obsession with martyring themselves only Omar the leader of the group actually goes ahead and carries out a suicide bombing after he has a change of heart and tries to stop a confused Waj from blowing himself up, Barry sets off Hassan’s bomb after he tries to turn himself into the police, Faisal falls over onto a flock of sheep while holding bombs, Barry chokes on a sim card and is killed by an innocent pedestrian trying to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre, Waj gets confused and blows himself up in a kebab shop and Omar gives up and goes into a pharmacy where they said they would not blow up because it wouldn’t mean anything to their cause and actually commits a suicide bombing.
We the audience build up a relationship with Omar as he is the main character that we follow outside of just the group, we are taken into his home meeting his wife and child and see that he is a good father as well as a good role model, this is quite worrying as the entire operation is all his idea and we are swayed to the side where we like the suicide bomber that wants to kill hundreds of innocent people. We feel sorry for Waj as we can see that he really doesn’t understand what he is committing himself too, his character is very dim and childlike, he gets confused easily and has very childlike dreams and ambitions it makes the audience upset when he dies to some extent, even though he kills police officers it is shown through Omar’s perspective and the fact that he is upset makes us upset because we have attached ourselves to his character. Barry is seen to be the closest thing to a villain in the film even though when you think about it every one of them is a villain because they are plotting to be suicide bombers and kill innocent people, when Barry dies I think the audience wants him to because he takes the choice away from Hassan as he detonates his bomb ‘betraying his brother’ and because he tries to stop Omar talking Waj out of it by eating his SIM card. Faisal’s death I thought was very comical as the group were all telling him to run and were laughing at him until he tripped and exploded on the sheep. Hassan’s death is quite interesting for me though as he tells on the group and jeopardises their quest, by him doing that it seemed to finish the relationship we built up for him quite quickly as we felt stronger associated with Omar and the rest of the group finishing their quest which when you think about it is the exact opposite of what we the audience should be thinking and wanting to happen, the film is very cleverly made using the exact same narrative structures as any other film just used with a different topic that we shouldn’t support, suicide bombers and builds us up a relationship with the main character who’s quest is to commit a suicide bombing however there are many different setbacks along the road to raise tension and make us want them to achieve their goals which we shouldn’t do because we are theoretically supporting terrorists.
I think that this film does for me create sympathy for most of the main characters except for Barry who was the only one of the group that I personally wanted to die, Barry was made to be a very unlikable character by the way he talked to people, he was very rude and was not very bright at all. He was also portrayed to be quite evil and hateful with made the audience build up a dislike to him throughout the movie. Four lions does a very effective job of representing characters in a specific way by the many different things they do. I will have to think of ways in which to introduce and portray my character when it comes to designing my own film opening.
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