Hacker Cinema
Four Lions
2010 · Film · 97 min
Directed by Chris Morris
Four Lions tells the story of a group of British jihadists who push their abstract dreams of glory to the breaking point. As the wheels fly off, and their competing ideologies clash, what emerges is an emotionally engaging (and entirely plausible) farce.
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20 comments on Hacker News
This is a bit in a Chris Morris movie called Four Lions.
Reminds of of the Chris Morris movie Four Lions, in which the would-be terrorists use a similar kids side called Puffin Party to coordinate.
- Movies: Four Lions, The Other Guys
- Music: I know these are considered classic, but not many people I know actually listen to these- Jazz from 50s/60s- especially Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
- Books: Mind Illuminated by Culadasa for learning how to meditate. Five Elements of Effective Thinking by Burger, Starbird for learning anything.
I never knew what to think of Four Lions. It's a hugely politically charged topic (suicide bombers, islamist terrorism, particularly perpetrated by UK residents/nationals). I watched it 10 years ago so perhaps I misremember it, but it didn't feel to me that the movie had any particular political agenda, it was just making fun of a band of clumsy terrorists.
And the movies: Four Lions; The Day Shall Come.
And especially the relevant interviews: the movies are the artistic depictions, but the real world facts that made it important to produce them - the rationale and the exposition of salient research material that became the movie - are explained by Chris Morris in talks.
Also in the film Four Lions where terrorists use an online game to communicate (basically an unbranded Club Penguin). Wouldn't particularly recommend watching the film (it isn't bad, it is just depressing...which is the aim) but the media coverage of this does suggest it is occurring.
For a comedic take on the topic, the British satirist Chris Morris released a movie called The Day Shall Come a couple of years ago which explores how "news" is constructed by media jointly with organisations like the FBI. It's not as entertaining as Four Lions imo but it's very well researched as usual.
Homeland security did used to watch games like WoW out of concern that terrorists used it to communicate; I dunno if that's still a thing with the rise of encrypted messaging platforms, though.
The same idea came up in the movie Four Lions, where the main characters use Club Penguin to talk about their plans.
https://imdb.com/title/tt1341167/
> It was a bit like video games and movies where the bad guys are predictable and stupid.
Four Lions[1] has you covered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Lions
Yeah, and if ISIS were running an ISO 9001 certified terror plot, that's exactly how they'd do it.
But in the real world, a terrorist doesn't just spawn at the other end of de_dust. They know others in these social circles long before they're radicalised.
The current crop of terrorists also happens to be a few landings short of a pilot's license, so to speak: the "Four Lions factor" (named for the movie) refers to the hypothesis that the aggressors' incompetence has been a major factor foiling their plans. How are they going to use a VPN if they frequently blow themselves up because they get confused by time zones?
Not that I consider this policy good in any possible way. It's one more example of that country softly proclaiming "all men are created equal / with unalienable rights", then turning around and making visitors feel like Somalian hostages. But if I were tasked with unearthing terrorist networks, I'd definitely get entirely to excited at the prospect of getting access to the Facebook graph.
It also reminds me of "Pantou the dog" [0] from Brass Eye [1] (created by the same person as Four Lions), which successfully duped several British celebrities and politicians. That particular episode caused media hysteria when it came out.
[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=RcU7FaEEzNU&t=20m15s
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jan/30/brass-eye-at-20-still-chris-morris-at-his-hysterical-gobsmacking-best
Wasn't that a joke in the film Four Lions?
Gwern's fantastic essay, Terrorism is not Effective: http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20Effective
>No terrorist group has achieved a kill rate anywhere near a conventional military; and are vastly less than those death tolls for guerrilla organizations or dictators. Stalin or Mao could, in a bad day, exceed the deaths caused by all international terrorism over the last 2 centuries. 9/11, the crowning incident of terrorism in those centuries, was equaled by just 29 days of car accidents in the USA - and 9/11 was only accidentally that successful! 9/11 is also a sterling example of the availability bias: besides it, how many attacks could the best informed Western citizen name? Perhaps a score, on a good day, if they have a good memory; inasmuch as the MIPT database records >19,000 just 1968-2004, it’s clear that terrifyingly exceptional terrorist attacks are just that. Remarkably, it seems that it is unusual for terrorist attacks to injure even a single person; the MIPT database puts the number of such attacks at 35% of all attacks. Certainly the post-9/11 record would seem to indicate it was a fluke... Many terrorist organizations keep very detailed financial records (consider the troves of data seized from Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq, from Bin Laden’s safehouse, or Al Qaeda’s insistence on receipts), with little trust of underlings, suggesting far less ideological devotion than commonly believed & serious principal-agent problems. Stories about terrorist incompetence are legion and the topic is now played for laughs (eg. the 2010 movie Four Lions), prompting columnists to tell us to ignore all the incompetence and continue to be afraid.
There is a lot of evidence that terrorist groups are incredibly ineffective. Not just recent attacks in the US, but statistics world wide and through all of history. Gwern wrote a detailed essay on how incompetent terrorist groups are: http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20Effective
>9/11, the crowning incident of terrorism in those centuries, was equaled by just 29 days of car accidents in the US - and 9/11 was only accidentally that successful! 9/11 is also a sterling example of the availability bias: besides it, how many attacks could the best informed Western citizen name? Perhaps a score, on a good day, if they have a good memory; inasmuch as the MIPT database records >19,000 just 1968-2004, it’s clear that terrifyingly exceptional terrorist attacks are just that. Remarkably, it seems that it is unusual for terrorist attacks to injure even a single person; the MIPT database puts the number of such attacks at 35% of all attacks. Certainly the post-9/11 record would seem to indicate it was a fluke...
>Many terrorist organizations keep very detailed financial records (consider the troves of data seized from Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq, from Bin Laden’s safehouse, or Al Qaeda’s insistence on receipts), with little trust of underlings, suggesting far less ideological devotion than commonly believed & serious principal-agent problems. Stories about terrorist incompetence are legion and the topic is now played for laughs (eg. the 2010 movie Four Lions), prompting columnists to tell us to ignore all the incompetence and continue to be afraid.
Also see his essay Terrorism is not about Terror: http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20about%20Terror
I disagree. There is a lot of evidence that terrorist groups are incredibly ineffective. Not just recent attacks in the US, but statistics world wide and through all of history. Gwern wrote a detailed essay on how incompetent terrorist groups are: http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20Effective
>9/11, the crowning incident of terrorism in those centuries, was equaled by just 29 days of car accidents in the US - and 9/11 was only accidentally that successful! 9/11 is also a sterling example of the availability bias: besides it, how many attacks could the best informed Western citizen name? Perhaps a score, on a good day, if they have a good memory; inasmuch as the MIPT database records >19,000 just 1968-2004, it’s clear that terrifyingly exceptional terrorist attacks are just that. Remarkably, it seems that it is unusual for terrorist attacks to injure even a single person; the MIPT database puts the number of such attacks at 35% of all attacks. Certainly the post-9/11 record would seem to indicate it was a fluke...
>Many terrorist organizations keep very detailed financial records (consider the troves of data seized from Al-Qaeda-in-Iraq, from Bin Laden’s safehouse, or Al Qaeda’s insistence on receipts), with little trust of underlings, suggesting far less ideological devotion than commonly believed & serious principal-agent problems. Stories about terrorist incompetence are legion and the topic is now played for laughs (eg. the 2010 movie Four Lions), prompting columnists to tell us to ignore all the incompetence and continue to be afraid.
Also see his essay Terrorism is not about Terror: http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20about%20Terror
And also Four Lions[0], a satire about terrorism
And you may know him as the first Denholm from the IT crowd.
[0] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1341167/
Thoughts and prayers with the victims and their families. I just watched the movie "Four Lions" this past weekend and anyone who has seen it may have the same eery feeling I currently do.
Anyone ever see the movie "Four Lions"? Basically it's a dark comedy about a bunch of jihadist trying to bomb the London Marathon, but fail because they're incompetent.
Too bad life doesn't always imitate art.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Lions
On a related note; if you've not seen "Monsters" then you should track it down, a great film! (it should have had a BAFTA but had the misfortune to be released the same year as the even better "Four Lions").
I was half expecting to see a reference to Chris Morris's recent film Four Lions. That film has been dubbed "controversial" here in the UK precisely because its protagonists are portrayed as nitwits, albeit nitwits with bombs.