In the Loop

Director: Armando Ianucci

Review by: Roberto Azula

There are black comedies, and then there are pitch-black, dark as coal black comedies.  Your usual run of the mill black comedy will score jokes and pratfalls at the expense of say, its cast of half a dozen people.  But in Armando Iannuci’s painfully brilliant In the Loop, the joke’s on the thousands of American and British soldiers and the millions of Iraqi people who suffered through one of history’s most ill conceived military invasions.  

In the Loop does not mention Iraq explicitly; rather, the film is focused on the savage office politics within the British Foreign Service and American State Department.  The film takes some time to find its footing; my first impression was In the Loop was merely a typical British farce, with its requisite dry humor and deadpan deliveries in the face of rising absurdities.   But once I fully understood what precisely was at stake, In the Loop’s devastating humor really slammed me.

The story is kicked off by bumbling nitwit of a politician Jamie MacDonald (Paul Higgins) who declares to the press that “war is not foreseeable” when asked if the UK is intent on a military intervention in the Middle East. This vague statement leads to cavalcade of double-crosses and back-stabbings as the ministers of the war-hungry Prime Minister and President (who are never seen or named) desperately try to rationalize, on paper, the reasons for going to war.  Another set of somewhat more principled flunkies try their damndest to stop the march to war.

The players in these little dramas that would decide the fate of millions are utterly repellant, and for that reason I absolutely loved them.  The Prime Minister’s Director of Communications Malcolm Tucker, played by a feral, off his nut Peter Capaldi, is a volcano of obscenities and aggression, bullying everyone within his vicinity in torrents of horrific abuse. His counterpart is the equally nasty but icy Defense Undersecretary Linton Barwick (a gleefully reptilian David Rashice), who will stop at nothing to ensure the United Nations gets the “right” story to justify a military invasion.  They are opposed by frazzled, gum-bleeding Secretary of Diplomacy Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy) and the jolly but haunted General Miller (James Gandolfini), who gamely try to outmaneuver the warmongers.  It’s sickening hijinx in the White House, Downing Street, and the UN Headquarters, and the absolute worst in office skullduggery are displayed for your shedenfreude pleasure.

In the Loop is wonderfully and often manically shot, and has a very distinctive televised feel to it.  In the Loop is actually a cinematic reprise of the British comedy series The Thick of It, created by Ianucci.  It’s very clear early on that the actors’ absolute ease and tight timing with each other emerged from the grueling schedule of a television series.  I was completely unaware of The Thick of It, but my ignorance of this series in no way detracted from this film.

Like all great black comedies, In the Loop simultaneously makes you laugh, and makes you feel bad for laughing.  I came out of the theater in a weird mood; I just watched a very funny movie, but a movie that forced me to think of the political madness of the last eight years.  I can’t say In the Loop left me in a good mood, but I certainly felt a little wiser, if not a little mentally bruised.  As the true extent of the ineptitude and venal corruption of the Bush Administration gradually comes to light in the wake of infuriating government memos and the collapse of the Republican Party, the timing of In the Loop couldn’t be better. This movie isn’t Chicken Soup for the Soul; it’s more like Castor Oil for the Soul.