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Flicks - In the Loop In the Loop is a very sharp and biting British satire depicting the lead-up to war in the Middle East as a petty catfight between rival politicians. by Chris Dashiell - The Film Snob Good political satire is hard to come by in this country. Too often we get something dumbed down and heavy-handed like W, Oliver Stone's recent attempt at satirizing Bush. Maybe American directors could take lessons from across the pond. A new British film called In the Loop is a very sharp and biting satire depicting the lead-up to war in the Middle East as a petty catfight between rival politicians.
A British cabinet minister named Simon Foster, played by the marvelous Tom Hollander, gets in over his head by telling an interviewer that war is unforeseeable. For this he earns the wrath of Malcolm Tucker, the ruthless and hilariously foul-mouthed Scottish chief aide to the Prime Minister, played with tremendous gusto by Peter Capaldi. Foster is an urbane, yet clueless publicity-seeker who continues to say the wrong things even as he insinuates himself into the British-American talks leading up to the possible invasion of an unspecified country. His new young aide, Toby Wright, played by Chris Addison, has a talent for inadvertently leaking the wrong information at the wrong time, which ends up helping the American hawks, led by a condescending and pretentious White House insider played by David Rasche. Opposing him in Washington is an Assistant Secretary of State, played by Mimi Kennedy. The Sopranos' James Gandolfini shows up as a general trying to stop the rush to war. The bitter joke in all this is that nobody really discusses principles—it's all framed in terms of personal hatreds and power plays, with insults and put-downs flying fast and furious.
In the Loop is directed by Armando Ianucchi, who has helmed quite a few successful British TV satires, and three or four other clever writers helped him out with the script. The characters are exaggerated just enough to make you laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, but the contrast between the small-minded politicians and their earth-shaking decisions is realistic enough to ground the picture. The film captures the absurd labyrinths of bureaucracy, the wretched Orwellian lingo (in which, for instance, a war committee is called a future planning committee), and the endless jockeying for career advantage to the detriment of the public good. Each functionary has an aide who seems like a clone—even Malcolm has a Scottish right-hand man, played by James Smith, who is more aggressive and profane than his boss. There's also an element of embarrassment comparing British parochialism to the pompous, powerful Americans—in the midst of all this maneuvering, Foster has to deal with an idiotic village constituent complaining about a crumbling wall on his property.
This is one of the most intelligent and most expertly acted satires I've seen. In the end we understand how decisions resulting in thousands of deaths can arise from the most limited and self-serving characters you'd ever have the misfortune to meet. In the Loop is a triumph.