It strikes me as inevitable that a movie like Four Lions would be made in the UK before something similar would be made in America, and perhaps that such a movie will only be made in the UK:
This isn't quite a boggart situation: laughing at wannabe terrorists doesn't remove the threat of terrorism from the world. But a movie like this undermines the foundation for our outsized fear of terrorism and questions how well we understand who goes off to become terrorists and why. And that's useful if it gives us pause in enacting and supporting unwise security-oriented policies. I don't know whether in the long term it's more useful to treat people who would commit acts of terrorism as dangerous, deranged, and depraved, or merely as silly, as people who misunderstand history and their power to influence it. Is shame and lack of cool a more valuable deterrent than moral disapprobation?
I'm sure I'm over-thinking this. But I do think it's significant that we've got a movie from the recruits' perspective. And the idea of ordinary guys running off to jihad isn't far-fetched—Washingtonian's got a story in our November issue about five men from Northern Virginia who were busted in Pakistan for trying to join terrorist groups. There is no one reason why someone decides to go to war against the West: religious conviction, desire to do something significant, suicidal ideation, groupthink, disastrous momentum, a feeling of profound displacement. Understanding some of the less serious, considered, and rational reasons people make these kinds of decisions is useful, if an unfamiliar effort.
The UK has a better track record of looking ridiculousness in the face, calling it what it is, and finding humor in it anyway than we are, I think. And America's perspective on terrorism and the war on terror is still so invested that I think it would be hard for an American studio to find a movie like this compelling.