History Film / FourLions

* NotSoDifferent: An implied, WordOfGod example. In [[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatlife/7196487/Chris-Morris-in-the-lions-den.html an interview]], Morris revealed that Barry was based on a real-life person who was originally a member of the [=BNP=] but who decided to study the Qu'ran to be better able to attack Muslims, only to end up accidentally converting himself and becoming a key face of Islamic fundamentalism. While Barry's similar past is only subtly alluded to (it most obviously coming out in his suspicious eagerness to blow up mosque, implying he hasn't entirely abandoned his former prejudices), this backstory establishes a clear parallel between white nationalist terrorism and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

* WindmillCrusader: The Lions claim that they are trying to defend Islam from western oppression and tyranny, but while they might have a shred of a point in a broader geo-political sense, it's quite telling that pretty much all the non-Muslim characters who they know or encounter are perfectly decent and respectful towards them, and they never face any kind of injustice or intolerance due to their religious beliefs.

* AxCrazy: Barry is clearly not very stable, and one gets the impression that he's turned to radical Islam largely because it gives him an excuse to be violent.

* ActualPacifist: As part of the deconstruction of AcceptableReligiousTargets, Omar's fundamentalist Muslim brother Ahmed tries to talk him out of doing violence, which he rightly suspects he's planning. Naturally, the authorities see him as the terrorist mastermind behind it and are threatening him with torture at the end. Ahmed seems to be a more fundamentalist Muslim than Omar, ironically, refusing to enter the same room with Omar's wife and in Islamic garb everywhere he goes, whereas Omar wears Western-style clothes. He explicitly argues that fundamentalist interpretations of Islam ''prohibit'' the violence Omar wants to commit, averting the usual depictions. TruthInTelevision for Islamic fundamentalists who oppose terrorism.

* BloodyHilarious: [[spoiler: Feisal and the sheep end up in a binbag.]]

* YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters: The Lions never refer to themselves or think of themselves as "terrorists" and actually view themselves as holy warriors fighting the evils of Western Imperialism. More often than not, they refer to themselves as "jihadists", which is taken from the translation of the word "jihad" as "struggle". However, other rebel groups that employ similarly violent tactics against British society to achieve their ends, just as the Lions intend to achieve, [[HypocriticalHumor are still referred to as "terrorists" by the Lions]]. Specifically, when Feisal mentions his "IRA voice" to Barry, Barry chastises him for using a "terrorist" voice which could blow their cover.

* CaliforniaDoubling: Some of the London scenes are actually Sheffield city centre. [[spoiler: Barry blowing up]] looks like the corner of Hawley Street and Campo Lane. Also, while the exterior of Meadowhall is shown, its interior is mostly played by another Sheffield shopping centre, Crystal Peaks.

* DeadlyEuphemism: Omar tells his wife that his group is about to perform their suicide bombing by saying that he's "taking his team upstairs." He has to say it this way because he's in public, within earshot of police.

** "FUCK MINI BABYBEL!"

* ArmouredClosetGay: Repressed homosexuality is a rather plausible explanation for Barry's character, given his bizarre "initiation ritual" with Hasan (which involves shoving a baked bean up his penis) and forcing Waj to urinate into his own mouth. Indeed, it is probable that he turned to fundamentalist Islam because it let him fight against the society that he secretly wishes he was part of.

** At the training camp, Waj and Omar try to use a rocket launcher to destroy a [=UAV=], only for it to fire backwards. [[spoiler: During the very end of the movie, we find out they took out UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden-this was a year before he actually was killed.]]
** Early on, Omar scoffs at Faisal's plan to blow up a chemist's (for Americans, a pharmacy). [[spoiler: Guess what he ends up blowing up at the end of the movie]]
* CaliforniaDoubling: Some of the London scenes are Sheffield city centre. [[spoiler: Barry blowing up]] looks like the corner of Hawley Street and Campo Lane. Also, while the exterior of Meadowhall is shown, its interior is mostly played by another Sheffield shopping centre, Crystal Peaks.

* CoincidentalBroadcast: Omar is riding a tram when he hears a news broadcast about Feisal's head being discovered through its televisions.
* CompletelyMissingThePoint: Waj's Chicken Cottage rant, Barry asking Feisal to "show me the voice"... The wannabe jihadists seem unable to agree on what the point actually is. Even Omar, the guy with the most gumption out of the lot of them, fails to come up with a point whilst telling his son about his plans.

* CrapsackWorld: [[spoiler: The DownerEnding emphasizes this. Omar's ActualPacifist brother gets treated as a terrorist, an innocent hostage is killed by the police and they remain adamant that he wasn't one. Crapsack through incompetence and implied prejudice.]]

* DistinctionWithoutADifference: "It's not a cupboard! It's... it's a small room."

* EvenEvilHasStandards: {{Played with}} bizarrely-Omar is heading a terrorist plot to kill who-knows-how-many innocent people, but he still tries to take the moral high ground over his brother for "locking women in a cupboard." He also, a lot more understandably, reacts like this to Barry's plans to blow up a mosque, and is ultimately unwilling to manipulate Waj into blowing himself up when he demonstrated having changed his mind.

* FauxYay: "We're going to get down to some gay business". [[spoiler:They're not.]]
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Barry eating his SIM card, talking about blowing up a pharmacy.
* TheFundamentalist: Only two characters are actually fundamentalists. Barry and Ahmed. Although Barry is hypocritical and lies when pointed out. Omar at most is just a really bitter Cultural Muslim. And the rest of the Lions kind of just do what people tell them to do.
* GratuitousEnglish: Omar's Pakistani uncle speaks in Urdu but randomly throws in bits of English when he's ranting to Omar and Waj, such as when they shoot their Kalashnikovs in the air, and his long rant mentions "James fuck Bond!"

** The jihadists all think of themselves as champions of Islam, when none of them seem to be particularly religious. Hassan admits that he rarely goes to mosque, and Barry outright states that it's a waste of time, since he sees everyone in there as idiots and sellouts. Waj doesn't seem to understand the concept of praying to Mecca . Omar's family is much less conservative than his deeply religious brother, and they laugh off his religious arguments. Even Faisal, the most devout of the group, is only obeying laws that his father tells him to obey (and his father is crazy).

** Barry suggests bombing a mosque to radicalize the moderates and incite revolution. Omar likens it to punching yourself in a street fight. Barry counters that you could punch yourself in the face to make yourself "go mental" and win the fight. Omar goads him into trying it, and Barry hits himself in the nose. Omar then mocks him for wiping the blood away, as this represents the jihadists that will be inspired by the mosque bombing, and he's wiping out the revolution...

** When a police sniper tells his partner that the person in a Wookie costume he shot wasn't the target, the second sniper responds, "It must have been the target, because I shot it." (with the same logic repeated by Malcolm Storge MP when defending the police and the government's failure to prevent the attack at the end of the film: "As I understand it, the police shot the right man, but the wrong man exploded.")
** When Barry's car breaks down, he blames "Jewish spark plugs", on the basis that "Jews invented spark plugs to control world transport!"
** In order to convince Feisal to bomb the mosque, Barry (notice a theme, here?) asks if his father has ever eaten a Jaffa orange. When Feisal answers in the affirmative, Barry says "Right, he's buying nukes for UsefulNotes/{{Israel}}, he's a Jew."

* JerkAss: Barry. The others get a few PetTheDog moments and generally seem to not quite understand the implications of what they're planning on doing, but Barry is just a terrible person from the word go

* LosingYourHead: Feisal, literally and metaphorically; Hassan fails to clean up the LudicrousGibs properly and Feisal's head is found by the police.

-->"It was a head! It was obviously a head!"

* MoodWhiplash: Many times-it's by Creator/ChrisMorris, fer chrissakes.

* NonIndicativeName: The film is called ''Four Lions'', but there are five main jihadists in the film. [[spoiler:One doesn't make it to the Title Drop, however]].
* NoodleImplements: ''*pulls out a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weetabix weetabix]]*:'' "We know a lot more than you think!"
* OhCrap: [[http://www.libertasfilmmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Four-Lions-04345.jpg Two of the three lions present]] who [[spoiler: witness Feisal's death]]. The other is too stupid to immediately comprehend what's happened.

* PoliceAreUseless: [[spoiler: They attack and arrest Omar's peace-loving brother in the middle of a meeting with his Muslim friends whilst Omar is stuffing nitroglycerin into a Honey Monster outfit, they shoot an innocent marathon runner dressed as Chewbacca and after a naive negotiator (played by Creator/BenedictCumberbatch) completely flubs the Waj hostage situation, they break in and shoot his hostage, meaning that two entirely innocent people were killed directly by police incompetence]]

* TerroristsWithoutACause: Waj's response to being asked what his demands are by a police negotiator-"I... I don't think I have any..."

* TokenWhite: Barry

* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: [[spoiler:Feisal is seen blowing himself up in the trailer, and he's missing from promotional art material]].

* YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters: The Lions never refer to themselves or think of themselves as "Terrorists" and actually view themselves as holy warriors fighting the evils of Western Imperialism. More often than not, they refer to themselves as "jihadists", which is taken from the translation of the word "jihad" as "struggle". However, other rebel groups that employ similarly violent tactics against British society to achieve their ends, just as the Lions intend to achieve, [[HypocriticalHumor are still referred to as "terrorists" by the Lions]]. Specifically, when Feisal mentions his "IRA voice" to Barry, Barry chastises him for using a "terrorist" voice which could blow their cover.

* WomenAreWiser:[[ZigZaggedTrope Zig-Zagged]]. Omar's wife seems like a down-to-earth woman, but as the film progresses, we see that she's completely onboard with Omar's plan to kill himself, and doesn't seem to have the slightest problem with him leaving her a widow with a young son. Critics found this to be unrealistic, but the filmmakers asserted that real terrorists often have remarkably stable home lives.
* YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters: The Lions never refer to themselves or think of themselves as "Terrorists" and actually view themselves as holy warriors fighting the evils of Western Imperialism. More often than not, they refer to themselves as "jihadists", which is taken from the translation of the word "jihad" as "struggle". On the other hand, other rebel groups that employ similar violent tactics against British society, which the Lions are planning, [[HypocriticalHumor are referred to as "terrorists" by the Lions]]. Specifically, when Feisal mentions his "IRA voice" to Barry, Barry chastises him for using a "terrorist" voice which could blow their cover.

* QuoteMine: Intentionally {{invoked}} and {{subverted}} with some of the movie posters. Instead of the usual three-word out-of-context reviews from each of the main national papers, they just show the word "Funny" about [[strike:seven]] fifteen times.

* ManChild: Waj brings a toy gun to the shooting of his Jihad video, reads children's books (in his defense, they're children's books meant to teach Urdu... which he nonetheless can't finish), and his conception of the afterlife is that of a theme park ride. To a smaller degree, the rest of the protagonists are all crushingly naive. Conversely, Omar's son is shown to be pretty sharp when Omar tries to justify suicide bombing by way of ''Disney/TheLionKing''.

** At the training camp, Waj and Omar try to use a rocket launcher to destroy a [=UAV=], only for it to fire backwards. [[spoiler: During the very end of the movie, we find out they took out OsamaBinLaden-this was a year before he actually was killed.]]

* PoorCommunicationKills: The negotiator tries to make small talk with Waj and asks Waj if he's an "ass man", meaning does he find butts more arousing than boobs, but Waj misunderstands it as an insult-"Who you calling Ass-Man?" and gets angry, breaking down the negotiations.

* PoliceAreUseless: [[spoiler: They attack and arrest Omar's peace-loving brother in the middle of a meeting with his Muslim friends whilst Omar is stuffing nitroglycerin into a Honey Monster outfit, they shoot an innocent marathon runner dressed as Chewbacca and after a naive negotiator (played by BenedictCumberbatch) completely flubs the Waj hostage situation, they break in and shoot his hostage, meaning that two entirely innocent people were killed directly by police incompetence]]

* NoExceptYes: "It's not a cupboard! It's... it's a small room."

* BritishAccents: A nice smattering of various northern accents and a few London ones.

* BaitAndSwitch: In one scene, [[spoiler: it looks like the four would-be terrorists are about to get arrested. They arrest Ahmed instead.]]

** In order to convince Feisal to bomb the mosque, Barry (notice a theme, here?) asks if his father has ever eaten a Jaffa orange. When Feisal answers in the affirmative, Barry says "Right, he's buying nukes for {{Israel}}, he's a Jew."

* PoliceAreUseless: Jury is still out on whether they're more or less incompetent than the suicide bombers but [[spoiler: they attack and arrest Omar's peace-loving brother in the middle of a meeting with his Muslim friends whilst Omar is stuffing nitroglycerin into a Honey Monster outfit, they shoot an innocent marathon runner dressed as Chewbacca and after a naive negotiator (played by BenedictCumberbatch) completely flubs the Waj hostage situation, they break in and shoot his hostage, meaning that two entirely innocent people were killed directly by police incompetence]]

** Debatable, but the sequence with the [[spoiler: police shooting the wrong person at the marathon]] reminded some viewers of the controversy over the shooting of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_De_Menezes Jean Charles De Menezes]].

* ShowntheirWork: In an interview with NPR Chris Morris stated the film was based on research he'd done after 9/11 that led him to believe many would-be terrorists are completely incompetent. He claimed that the 'bomb the mosque' scene is taken verbatim from an MI5 surveillance transcript.

* CompletelyMissingThePoint: Waj's Chicken Cottage rant, Barry asking Feisal to "show me the voice]]... The wannabe jihadists seem unable to agree on what the point actually is. Even Omar, the guy with the most gumption out of the lot of them, fails to come up with a point whilst telling his son about his plans.

The debut feature film directed by Creator/ChrisMorris, and written by Morris in collaboration with Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain of ''PeepShow'' fame. It's a comedy of the type where a bunch of ordinary blokes, none of them the very sharpest of minds, take on a task bigger than themselves. Similar to ''Film/TheFullMonty'', in a funny way. Except that they want to be [[BlackComedy Islamist suicide bombers]].

* InsaneTrollLogic: Many examples. But Barry, with his blatant hypocrisy, fundamentalism and unwillingness to hold himself accountable for anything provides most of it.

** The jihadists all think of themselves as champions of Islam, when none of them seem to be particularly religious. Hassan admits that he rarely goes to mosque, and Barry outright states that it's a waste of time, since he sees everyone in there as idiots and sellouts. Waj doesn't seem to understand the concept of praying to Mecca. Omar's family is much less conservative than his deeply religious brother, and they laugh off his religious arguments. Even Faisal, the most devout of the group, is only obeying laws that his father tells him to obey (and his father is crazy).

* InsaneTrollLogic:

* EvenEvilHasStandards: {{Played with}} bizarrely-Omar is heading a terrorist plot to kill who-knows-how-many innocent people, but he still tries to take the moral high ground over his brother for "locking women in a cupboard." Further, he is ultimately unwilling to trick Waj into going through with the attack once his heart starts having second thoughts (which is three more than his brain).

* CrapsackWorld: Essentially every character is either an idiot, crazy or both.