The Brag

Dumb & Bomber
Riz Ahmed, star of jihadi-comedy Four Lions, talks about working with controversial comedy director Chris Morris.
By Jody MacGregor

Chris Morris has a history of courting controversy with his comedy. His news and current affairs parodies The Day Today and Brass Eye laid down the template for The Onion and The Chaser, but took even more risks. During an episode of Brass Eye satirising drug panics, Morris even approached real drug dealers on-camera, trying to buy made-up substances from them.

Accordingly (perhaps) his new feature-length movie, Four Lions, is a buddy comedy about terrorists. British actor-slash-MC Riz Ahmed plays Omar, the half-bright leader of a squad of jihadists who spend more time quarrelling with each other over trivialities than they do plotting destruction; their bomb-maker’s brilliant plan involves strapping explosives to crows. In a way, Four Lions does for terrorists what Hogan’s Heroes did for Nazis, portraying them as bumbling fools you can’t take seriously – except it humanises them at the same time. Ahmed says that’s because much of the movie is based in truth.

“The film isn’t about, ‘Let’s take a subject that in real life is deadly serious and invert it in some farcical way.’ It’s very realistic,” he explains, “because what we usually get is the boiled-down headline that’s very serious and drumroll and sensationalist, but there’s a whole load of bloopers and out-takes either side of that headline that we don’t see. And of course there are, because terrorist cells are groups of guys trying to organise something – and groups of guys trying to organise anything are going to screw it up, they just are.”

Morris spent three-and-a-half years researching Four Lions, talking to everybody from wannabe jihadis to MI5 agents and ordinary Muslims. Ahmed was involved in that process from quite early on. “Film Four had given me some DVDs of people making martyrdom videos,” he says, “and you watch it – or you watch it on YouTube – and you have some young guy in Bosnia going, ‘Brothers, come out here. Come fight jihad, brothers. The country is beautiful, the people are beautiful and the kebabs are amazing.’ What the fuck did he just say? Did he say come out and fight jihad because of amazing kebabs? And yeah, he just did. That is the reality of men, basically. It’s a testosterone-driven enterprise in many ways, and that’s what you get.”

Although it’s called Four Lions, there are five main characters in the movie. Besides Omar, there’s bomb-maker Faisal, who’ll pretend to be a woman but won’t get rid of his beard; 2Pac fan Hassan, who delivers threats via hilariously bad rapping; British convert Barry, who thinks you can throw-off the police by eating your SIM card; and the child-like Waj, who can’t wait to go to heaven because he’s been told it’s just like an amusement park. Omar and Waj in particular are surprisingly sympathetic characters and by the end of the movie you find yourself hoping things work out for them, despite yourself.

“The weird group dynamic in the film was almost mirrored off-screen amongst us five actors,” says Ahmed. “[We] were holed up in slightly depressing student accommodation in Sheffield; I think that was a deliberate ploy of Chris’s to make sure we all got cabin fever and lived in each other’s pockets and became like bickering brothers.”

Ahmed describes the low-budget shoot in Sheffield as remarkably hassle-free, even though they were blowing things up in fields. Though they disguised notes about where they were filming each day as invitations to children’s parties, it wasn’t really necessary. There were no problems with locals or the authorities. “The whole shoot was very painless and the reception of the film has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s strange in a way, isn’t it? When you hear the tagline of this project you hold your breath and go, ‘Uh-oh, trouble!’ But it’s really been trouble-free the whole way through, from start to finish.

This positive energy has translated into good ‘bank’ for Four Lions. “We beat Iron Man 2 on screen averages,” Ahmed boasts. “The amazing thing is that the film just wouldn’t go away from cinemas. Six weeks in it was still opening on new screens. Now, three months in, it’s still showing at some cinemas. It’s kind of insane. I guess Chris has his cult following, but I think the film’s been so successful because it transcended even that – just got embraced as a great comedy rather than a political film or anything that people may have assumed it was.”

With Four Lions about to open in Australia, it begs the question: what about America? “There’s this perception that America’s not ready for it,” Ahmed replies, “but a couple of thousand Americans have seen it at [Sundance and the Los Angeles Film Festival] and they all seemed to love it. I think maybe sometimes it’s pre-emptively shitting your pants about this film when you should watch it and instead piss your pants, laughing.”

What: Four Lions, Dir. Chris Morris
When: Opens August 19