Packed with peppery satire and garlicky four-letter words, "In the Loop" is stuffed like a South St. Louis sausage with wit and nasty humor. With barely a pause for breath between the last credits and the first spoken words, it takes aim at American and English politicians in the run-up to the attack on Iraq, and it fires totally accurate barbs at all.
Director Armando Iannucci’s film never mentions a nation, but shots of the White House, 10 Downing Street and the UN headquarters provide their own setting and quickly confirm where we are and what is about to happen.
The fun begins when Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), the English minister of international development, uses the unfortunate phrase, "War is unforeseeable," to a group of reporters. In an effort to squelch the immediate conflagration, he then talks about "the mountain of conflict," and we have an inferno.
Enter Peter Capaldi, as press secretary Malcolm Tucker, a Scotsman with some of the most innovatively vulgar insults I’ve ever heard. He’s a master. So is Chris Addison as Toby Wright, his assistant. The English cast has a lot of talent, but few household names with the exception of James Gandolfini in a wonderful piece of casting against type. He’s a lieutenant general of the U.S. Army, assigned to the Pentagon, but he is against any potential war. So is Mimi Kennedy as Karen Clark of the American State Department and her aide, Liza, played in most effective manner by Anna Chlumsky. On the other side of the divide are war-hungry types like Linton Barwick (David Rasche), and his aide, Chad, a fine portrayal by Zach Woods.
The fact that all these people have had, or are about to have, relationships in the office, the conference room, the cocktail lounge and the bedroom just ratchets everything up a notch, and the result is a splendid piece of comedy, but pay attention or you’ll be left behind.
The screenplay, by Jesse Armstrong and Simon Blackwell, with some input from Iannucci, moves faster than Indy cars on Memorial Day. Just a hoot!
At the Plaza Frontenac
-Joe