ScreenWize

In a scenario that sounds eerily familiar, the sparkling British satire In The Loop begins with the British Prime Minister and the United States President unofficially keen on launching a war (with whom isn’t important) despite the protestations of their respective advisers, Minister for International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) and Lieutenant General Miller (James Gandolfini).

The Minister finds himself in a bit of a pickle when his words in a television interview come back to haunt him and see him in the centre of media speculation about the inevitability of war. He spends the remainder of the film conspiring with his very green assistant Toby (Chris Addison) to side-step the Machiavellian pro-war machinations of British Parliamentary spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) and get the right people to vote against the war at the UN.

Those ‘right people’ include the staff of US Assistant Secretary for Diplomacy Karen Clark (Mimi Kennedy), and her assistant Liza (Anna Chlumsky), who work to get themselves placed on a committee to plan the war that may or may not exist. Very much like an episode of Yes, Minister for the War on Terror generation, In the Loop is patchy but often achingly funny. The film suffers from an unpolished quality that betrays its television origins, both in terms of its production values and camera work. This lack of polish does however work to its favour when it comes to script (the most quotable movie since Mean Girls) and performance.
Director Armando Iannucci has three seasons of the political satire The Thick of It under his belt, from which In The Loop is derived (continuing on characters like Peter Capaldi’s political pit bull Malcolm), and fleshes out his screenplay (co-written with series writers Jesse Armstrong and Simon Blackwell) with improvised moments from his fine cast. Some, like James Gandolfini, seem to be having so much fun they cant keep from smiling, while Peter Capaldi chews himself great big chunks of scenery in a role some might think over the top, but having worked with tyrants like this in the past, I thought was moderate to restrained.

As I work my way through the boxed set of The West Wing I got for Christmas, I’m constantly impressed by just how literate and competent its characters are, but in a town full of public servants, I’m sure most of you will recognise that, unfortunately, our halls of power more resemble the shenanigans going on here.

CK

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Filed Under: Reviews by Simon