In the Loop (2008)

No matter the culture, no matter the country, politics is farce. It’s the crazed game playing of people so drunk on power that they don’t ever realize they’re regularly pissing themselves. It’s policy draw on deception, tricks and tactics merged with an infinite desire to betray. As the old saying goes, leadership regularly stifles the needs of a nation, compromising them by the mandate to maintain control. Toss in special interests, unlikely allies, regular scandals, and the freakish rarity of actually accomplishing something, and strange bedfellows are the least of its new world worries.

So it’s easy to see how this bi-partisan, bicameral back and forth leads to laughs. It, like most of its participants, is a no brainer. It’s also an arena that UK writer/director Armando Iannucci has mined before, most successful in his British sitcom The Thick of It. Now he’s turned that delicious debunking of the English government into a much honored and critically acclaimed feature film – In the Loop (new to DVD from IFC) – and the results are resplendent. Using the War in Iraq as a backdrop, and offering a multileveled look at the push toward invasion, Iannucci and his fellow screenwriters craft a burlesque so smart, so completely incapable of avoiding the truth, that it turns even the most meaningless events into a devious bit of double-edged détente.

During a radio interview, Secretary of State for International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) deviates from the standard government “line” on potential conflict in the Middle East. Calling it “unforeseeable”, he sets off a firestorm both at home and abroad. The Prime Minster’s chief policy strategist, a gruff and crude enforcer named Malcolm Tucker (the absolutely amazing Peter Capaldi), wants Foster’s bollocks on a platter. He sees nothing but irreparable damage from this disastrous quote.

Over in the US, Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy), the Assistant Secretary of Diplomacy, hopes to use the British as a means of uncovering a secret war committee seated by State Department snake Linton Barwick (David Rasche). With the help of General Miller (James Gandolfini), and a controversial position paper from her assistant Liza (Anna Chlumsky), Clarke is determined to stop the march to war. For Forster, just getting through the day without being terrorized by Tucker or undermined by new assistant Toby (Chris Addison) is a major accomplishment. When he steps into this fray, however, there’s no where to go but down.

Uproarious, bitter, and ever so slightly twisted, In the Loop revives our hope in art infiltrating and exposing the hypocrisies of life. It’s a foul-mouth free-for-all, a wicked assault on all that is proper and expected in the realm of Left/Right positioning. Loaded with both the driest of UK wit and the most excessive of crass curse word wizardry, this is a saber stabbed directly into the darkest heart of the sovereignty process, a blade soaked in the blood of dumb decisions, chest-thumping hubris, and the future lives of thousands of young men and women.

Using an Office like handheld approach, In the Loop places the audience directly into the meaningless mix of the political process. We are bystanders as positions are taken, alliances are forged (and quickly forgotten), and backroom dealings become front page news. Interlacing the need to remain territorial while inviting the like minded into their dominion, we see cat and mouse as a cutthroat enterprise, hands and asses slapped as readily as well honed daggers are aimed at the solar plexus. Sure, we’ve been there before, our post-Watergate world inundated with several marked social commentary spoofs. But In the Loop offers a take that’s so black, so clouded in mean-spirited cheek, that we forget how funny it all is.

Acting is crucial to getting this material across, and Iannucci recruits some former Thick accomplices – Peter Capaldi (as Tucker), Paul Higgins (as unhinged Press Officer Jamie McDonald), and Chris Addison (as new character Toby) – as well as bringing in new faces like Tom Hollander (as Foster), Mimi Kennedy (as Clarke) and James Gandolfini (as the jaded General) to man the mania. All work together in perfect harmony, making the ensemble element of this film function in a flawless and frisky manner. It’s interesting to watch Americans work within the very British mandates of In the Loop‘s sense of humor. You can see them wanting to arch and eyebrow or overplay a scene, removing the mischievous seriousness from the material. But Iannucci keeps them in check – that is, when he’s not purposefully letting them fly off the handle (a selection of deleted scenes, part of a smattering of added content on the DVD release, shows how far out some of the histrionics could become).

Indeed, Capaldi and Higgins are so good scatological outbursts that they provide a primer for how to turn vulgarity into convenient comic gold. They work their dirty mouths with untold energy and verve. Both manage the F-word, the C-word, and multicolored variables of same so well that you can’t wait for their next meltdown. From sexually descriptive assaults to position and philosophical battery, they become the lunatic yin to the more laid back, stereotypical stiff upper lip of the leadership’s yang. Hollander, who many will know from his place within the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, is equally effective as the pawn placed directly in the middle of this erratic ego fest. While Addison’s Toby is slightly under-drawn, he is balanced perfectly against Anna Chlumsky’s amiable aide Liza.

While some will see the targets as easy and the marksmanship as hit or miss, there’s no denying how delicious In the Loop really is. It carves a hole within the absurdity that is modern day ideology and argues, rather effectively, that most decisions aren’t based on dogma, but dimwitted double-crosses. Like the moment in Oliver Stone’s W. when Richard Dreyfuss’ Dick Cheney explains the oil-based reasons for invading Iraq, what we have here is pre-determination bumping up against the paving of a path to get there. Unlike other films which try to make sense of the surreality, that balances real insight with outrageous antics, In the Loop simply goes for the throat. As comedies go, it’s razor sharp. It’s merely the players and their positions that are dull.