Victims of 7/7 bombings criticise Four Lions

It was always going to be a consequence of making a comedy about suicide bombers, and now Chris Morris has been criticised by relatives of the July 7 terrorist attacks.

The families say there are too many similarities between his new film Four Lions and the real-life bombings, with a cell of four men travelling from Yorkshire to London to carry out their atrocities.

Rob Webb, whose sister Laura died in the Edgware Road Tube bomb, told the Daily Mail: ‘Suicide bombing is not particularly amusing.’

Graham Foulkes, whose 22-year-old son David died in the same attack, addedd: ‘It’s very specific, very aligned to what happened in 2005. That’s not parodying or being satirical about terrorists, it’s making money out of a specific attack.’

Mr Foulkes said families were calling on cinemas to boycott the film.

Grahame Russell, who lost his 28-year-old son Philip on the bus blown up in Tavistock Square, told Radio 5 Live: ‘I didn't see the humour in four people buying ingredients to make a bomb to come to London and kill innocent members of the public… I didn't think that was funny at all.

‘I was aggrieved someone would choose to make money from a tragic event like 7/7. They are morally bankrupt. They cannot offer, to my mind, a justification for making a film like this.’

Morris, who wrote Four Lions with Peep Show’s Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bains, has said he was not trying to offend with the film, as terrorism is too serious a topic to be tackled with shock tactics.

Producers Warp Films said: ‘The film does not mock or trivialise the suffering caused by bombings. We sympathise with those affected by the events of 7 July and did not seek to cause them any offence.’

Morris has been a villain in the eyes of certain sections of the media since his 2001 Brass Eye paedophile special about the hysterical coverage of child abuse.

Published: 7 May 2010