ScreenWize

Working on the basis that sacred cows make the juiciest steaks, Brit comedian and satirist Chris Morris applies his dark and biting humour to the topic of terrorism, in this tale of a bumbling group of Muslim suicide bombers from Sheffield. Tackling a subject as sensitive as this might seem like a dangerous mission for a comedian, but not only does Morris navigate the bad taste issue cleverly, he creates the funniest scenes to hit the big screen for a long time and then manages to go beyond the farce and show us some touching and chilling moments of humanity amongst the mayhem.

The story revolves around Omar (Riz Ahmed) who is trying to organise a small cell of radicalised English Muslims to martyr themselves for the cause. The group he brings together include his dopey brother Waj (Kayvan Novak), who is easily and frequently confused, and Fessal (Adeel Aktar) who is training crows strapped with explosives to fly at selected targets. Then there’s the paranoid and outspoken Barry (Nigel Lindsay) a convert to Islam who doesn’t agree with Omar’s careful approach and who wants to do something really big and noisy. After Omar and Waj visit an Al-Qa’ida training camp in the Middle East, the team prepare to carry out a bombing attack on the London Marathon. Of course, things don’t quite go according to plan – either for the four lions, or for the British police, who are portrayed as equally inept.

In many ways reminiscent of Monty Python’s group of revolutionaries in The Life Of Brian (was it the People’s Front of Judea or The Popular Front?), the four jihadi warriors argue with each other over everything: from their philosophical position and radical tactics, to how best to disguise themselves when going about securing the resources they need to carry out their mission. Like the Python films too, the structure is loose, sketch-like and character driven. In fact Morris pulls off the near impossible by making these hopelessly misguided characters so endearing that, as the film heads to its final act, the tension over their fate becomes almost unbearable.

Shot in a documentary style that downplays the comic nature of the piece, this is an always clever, often funny and sometimes uneasy piece of absurdist satire.

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Filed Under: Reviews by Simon