One Lion

Chris Morris couldn’t have asked for a better opening week for his latest film, Four Lions.

Considered so controversial that both BBC and Channel 4 refused to fund it, Four Lion is a dark comedy about four inept, bungling Jihadi terrorists of British-Pakistani origin and their attempts to blow-up London Marathon.




And along comes Faizal Shahzad, the terrorist of American-Pakistani origin, who tried to blow up Times Square last Sunday in an effort that will go down in history as the most incompetent, clumsy terrorist undertaking ever.

Think about it. Shahzad left his car awkwardly parked in the busy Time Square with gunpowder smoke billowing out of it. The car was filled with among other things, two five-gallon gasoline containers, three propane tanks, firecrackers, fertilizer packed in clear plastic bags bearing a store’s logo, a cooking pot, a 78-pound metal gun box, a GC-14P 14-gun steel security cabinet manufactured by Stack-On, two neon-colour alarm clocks and some batteries. And just in case, no one noticed it, he also left the ignition running and the hazard lights on.

Apparently, the bomb he was going for was a Rube Goldberg contraption, or as the bomb expert on the case, James Cavanaugh, explained a “‘swing-the-arm-with-the-shoe-that-hits-the-ball-and-knocks-over-a-stick-that-knocks-something-off-a-shelf” kind of bomb. No wonder, the bloody thing never went off, and left behind a treasure trove of evidence for the investigators. As another officer on the case commented, “This guy left everything here but his wallet.”

If I ever wanted to write a book on how not to conduct a terrorist bombing, this would be my star case study.
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Here's my favourite scene from the film on "how to blow up the internet".