Suicide bomber satire debuts at Sundance
Suicide bomber satire debuts at Sundance
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Monday, 25, Jan 2010 02:54
By Lewis Bazley.
Four Lions, the new comedy film from British satirist Chris Morris, has received its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
The Warp Films release tells of a quartet of incompetent potential suicide bombers who are planning a terrorist attack on London.
Starring Riz Ahmed and Kayvan Novak, the film looks certain to provoke a response from the British media due to its subject matter but was praised by critics for articulating "an incisive viewpoint".
"[The] notion of 'them and us' does not just boil down to race: It boils down to them, the idiots, and us, the people who only see horror in extremism," wrote Empire's Damon Wise.
The Guardian's Jeremy Kay said the film's tonal shifts mean it fails to successfully satirise terrorism while David D'Arcy of Screen International said Four Lions "will offend all sorts of people".
"It will offend the British, it will offend Muslims, it will offend jihadists," he added.
"But if satire doesn't offend people, it is not satire."
Though Morris, creator of The Day Today and Brass Eye, has not given interviews after the film's Sundance premiere, he told the screening audience the project had been inspired by his reading of a botched terrorist attack.
"It was like an Ealing comedy," he explained. "I felt there was a missing link and these guys were pretty foolish."
And Arsher Ali, who plays a would-be jihadist in Four Lions, stressed the film is a comedy.
"It's a dynamic of a bunch of guys who get together and mess everything up," he told Radio 4's Today programme.
"Terrorism is in the news almost every day, but there are little stories within those things that are inherently comic and inherently human.
"A film like this is obviously a very strong counterpoint to the very serious side of it, which none of us condone, but there are human stories that need to be told, which can be quite touching."
See a clip from Four Lions below: