In a previous career I had to write a feature on Chris Morris, during all the Brass Eye furore. At one point in the, close to excellent, write me up I labelled him as a 'comedy terrorist' and now here I am doing another, far from excellent, write me up on his film comedy about terrorists. It's almost like things have come full circle or circle of life or summink.
Considering how highly I rate Morris, I was expecting this to be the best film EVER so was surprised that it took me a long while to get into it. An attack of the snooze-a-tron didn't help either as it made me a bit foggy and this is a film that is brain funny not HaHa funny. A bit of rewind action later and I was back in the swing of things like a jungle VIP and pleased to see that Morris' eye for the absurd was as sharp as ever. The sight of suicide bombers running around in ostrich and ninja turtle costumes just challenges you not to laugh at it.
More challenging for me though was the balance of the silliness against the endearingly supportive family of one of the hapless bombers. The scenes between father and son were uncomfortably sad - aided by the film's naturalistic style.
If you like your comedy to be a bit edgy and you don't read the Daily Mail you'll find much to enjoy here. I'll leave it to cleverer people than me to analyse Four Lion's place in these troubled times though. Someone that would never use the word 'cleverer' would be ideal.
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