Review: In The Loop
Is war unforeseeable? During an interview, Secretary of State for International Development Simon Foster accidentally states that a proposed war in the Middle East is “unforeseeable”. The Prime Minister’s Director of Communications, Malcolm Tucker, sends poor Foster through a shitstorm for abandoning the party line, but it is too late – Foster, and his hapless new aide Toby, becomes pawns in an international game of war politics.
Armando Iannucci’s bleak political satire, In The Loop, hardly takes the time to let the audience sit down before it pushes the pedal to the floor and keeps going at full speed for 106 hectic minutes. It basically plays out like an episode of The Thick Of It, while blazing trough some of the most chaotic, fragmented, cursed, hilarious scenes I have ever seen. Peter Capaldi’s sociopathic Malcolm Tucker – loosely based on Tony’s spin-doctor Alastair Campbell – spews perfect profanity at everybody in near proximity. James Gandolfini (the real Tony) is a legend and hearing his furious nasal breathing is like being reminded of an old friend of ours. He shines as a Pentagon general, who estimates war casualties on a toy calculator accompanied by honk horns and springy noises. Throughout the entire film, the war is an abstract political pulp of rhetoric, never the nasty, bloody, gory and deathy thing that it really is.
It is an extremely cynical view of the modern political landscape, which probably does not serve to further public faith in politicians or the democratic system. (A disappointed Telegraph hack bitching about the lack of constructive discourse and the cynicism it encourages here (happy endings are for horny losers, mate); Alastair Campbell finding the film boring here).
Real comedy stings. That’s why you’ve got to laugh. Now stop crying and go see this movie.