Four Lions Case Study

Plot-

Within the film ‘Four Lions’ there is a group of young British men who have been radicalised. All of them are aspiring suicide bombers. Characters Omar and Waj attend a terrorist training camp which is located in Pakistan, whilst Barry recruits another group member Hassan. The terrorist camp results in failure, which leads to the group gathering materials to create their own improvised bombs, with no actual agreed target by this point. The places they come up with range from the local mosque to the pharmacy chain Boots. Eventually they plan an attack by hiding their explosives in mascot outfits, there are feelings of doubt at this point but the groups’ stays together. Once one of the bombs has been detonated there are attempts by the police to shoot Omar whilst Barry is Heimlich manoeuvred by a passing person which causes his bomb to detonate. Later on within the film Waj managed to take a kebab shop hostage which is later raided by the police. Within the epilogue of the film the audience learns that Osama Bin Laden kills Omar and Waj after misfiring a rocket in Pakistan.

Cast-

Riz Ahmed as Omar, Kayvan Novak as Waj, Nigel Lindsay as Barry, Adeel Akhtar as Faisal and Arsher Ali as Hassan, these are the group members within the film. Craig Parkinson as Matt, Preeya Kalidas as Sofia, Julia Davis as Alice, Benedict Cumberbatch as Ed, a special branch negotiator, Alex MacQueen as Malcolm Storge M, Kevin Eldon as Sniper, Darren Boyd as Sniper, Mohammad Aqil as Mahamood and William El-Gardi.

Riz Ahmed started his acting career in The Road to Guantanamo, in which he played a member of the Tipton Three. In 2007 he was involved in a channel four drama Britz, which he portrayed Sohail Waheed. In 2009 he featured in the title role of the independent film Shift, which was directed by Eran Creevy. He plays a young charismatic young drug dealer in the film that sees a life in the day of this character. In 2008 he was nominated for best actor at the British independent film Award.

Kayvan Novak has starred in many different British television shows including Family Affairs, Holby City and Spooks. Throughout the years Kayvan has also made some appearances on other shows such as Soccer AM, 8 out of 10 Cats, Big Brother’s Little Brother and many others. He also managed to be included within a scene for This Is England’86, which in the final broadcast was cut from the show. A more successful role he has had includes playing an intelligence officer in the Academy Award winning Syriana. More recently he has voiced the character of Baines within the revived Thunderbirds Are Go.

Box office

When released in May 2010 in n this film, which are Flm4 (who present the film), Warp Films, Wild Bunch (who are in association with) and Optimum Releasing (who are also in association with). There are also a total of twenty-one different distribution companies that distributed the film all around the world. Some of which weren’t until three years after the film was originally released in the UK, it was released in both Finland and Portugal three years after the UK the film made £608,608 on its opening weekend, this being compared to the total that it grossed whilst been in the cinemas across the pond in North America show that it only made $304,137 when being released nearly a year later in the February of 2011. I suspect that is wasn’t as successful in America due to the unique plot and due to the occurrence of the 9/11 events that were caused by terrorists.

There are a total of four production companies within the original release. Some examples of these production companies include Capelight Pictures, Cathay-Keris Films, Drafthouse Films, Future Film, Hopscotch Films, Optimium Releasing, Paradiso Entertainment, Paradiso, UFO Distribution, Alta Famous, Film 1, Magnolia Home Entertainment and Nobel Entertainment.

The film was directed by Chris Morris, it was produced by Mark Herbert and Derrin Schlesinger. The screenplay as written by Chris Morris, Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain. It was Edited by Billy Sneddon, with Lol Crawley in charge of cinematography. The film was overall released on the 7th may 2010 and has a running time of 97 minutes. The budget for the film was around£2.5 million