companies: BBC Films,
UK Film Council and Aramid
Entertainment Fund
year: 2009
runtime: 106′
country: United Kingdom
director: Armando Iannucci
cast: Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander,
Gina McKee, James Gandolfini,
Chris Addison, Anna Chlumsky,
Enzo Cilenti, Paul Higgins,
Mimi Kennedy, Alex Macqueen,
Johnny Pemberton, Olivia Poulet,
David Rasche, Joanna Scanlan,
James Smith, Steve Coogan
writers: Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell,
Armando Iannucci, Ian Martin
and Tony Roche
cinematography: Jamie Cairney
music: Adam Ilhan
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“Twelve thousand troops . . . but that’s not enough. That’s the amount that are going to die, and at the end of a war you need some soldiers left, really, or else it looks like you’ve lost.”
~ Lt. General George Miller
I missed this one when it (briefly) ran in theaters. It certainly wasn’t a difficult film to miss, seeing as it played on a single screen for a week to two with nothing in the way of local advertising. The closest I had to a theatrical experience was with regard to the trailer, which played before one of the handful of screenings of The Hurt Locker I attended. That trailer, a manic flurry of editing backed by Rossinni’s William Tell Overture as re-interpreted by someone in the midst of a cocaine bender, killed with the audience, promising a smart, witty, imminently quotable piece of political satire the likes of which hasn’t been seen in some time. In The Loop went on to become one of the best-reviewed films of the past year (93 and 83 percentile out of 100 at Rottetomatoes and Metacritic respectively for those who need numbers to chew on), and certainly delivers on all of the trailer’s promises.
In The Loop plays a bit like an episode of NBC’s The West Wing (not surprising given that it’s an off-shoot of the British TV series The Thick of it), only scrubbed clean of any trace of systemic respect and filtered through a ludicrously obscene lens . There are no appearances by the President, Prime Minister, Secretary of Defense or what have you. The focus is firmly on the underlings, the mass of supporting players who make things happen through shear determination and hefty doses of luck, good or otherwise. And if all else fails, there are always plenty of facts to manipulate for the cause.
In fact, the entire narrative for In The Loop is about manipulation, most notably on the person-to-person level. The plot, such as there is one, concerns the confused cooperation of the United Kingdom and the United States in the build-up to an unspecified conflict in the Middle East and the unlikely Cabinet Minister Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) propelled into the center of things by his awful media appearances. Directing him into a host of disparate directions is Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi, The Lair of the White Worm), a vulgar enforcer from Downing Street whose job it is to keep bumbling ministers straddling the constantly shifting party line. Complicating matters on the other side of the pond are anti-war Asst. Sec’y of State Karen Clark (Mimi Kennedy) and Lt. General George Miller (James Gandolfini) and her enemy, conservative war-mongering Asst. Sec’y of State Linton Barwick (David Rasche).
Simon Foster is as close as the film comes to having a central identifiable character, a well-intentioned Minister turned political pawn (he doesn’t even have control of the blinds in his own office) who stumbles through all manner of positions on the issue of the war before being forced into resignation and, ultimately, fired. He is frequently equated with meat, room filler for meetings and photo-ops, and is tossed about from agenda to agenda before being fed to the dogs (rather, the press) and returned to his rural constituents, forgotten by the world at large. Through Foster we are witness to the monstrosity of the modern political machine and its ability to destroy those unlucky enough to become trapped in its quickly-moving parts.
Countering Foster’s political naivety is the seasoned Malcolm Tucker, the Downing Street attack dog tasked with keeping Foster in his place – wherever that might happen to be. Prone to outlandish threats of physical violence (“Stay detached, or that’s what I’ll do to your retinas!”) and vein-popping fits of rage, Tucker is adept at bullying those he sees as beneath him (everyone, in other words) into whatever corner the situation calls for, but is ultimately as worried about his personal stake in events as everyone else. Capaldi is exceptional, lending credulity to ludicrous phrases like “ass-spraying mayhem” in ways that I think few actors could. He is responsible for what is, arguably, the film’s finest moment, when Tucker, alone in the mediation room of the United Nations building, has a moment of silent existential panic.
There’s a lot of seriousness to In The Loop, not the least of which being the subject it tackles (obviously inspired by the build-up to the Iraq War in 2003). The country the United States and the United Kingdom are joining forces against goes unnamed throughout, re-enforcing one of the important points of the film: The governments don’t want a war against any nation in particular, they just want a war. There’s no escaping the fact that the decision the film’s mountain of supporting characters are awkwardly racing towards is going to cost real lives (per the quote at the head of this article).
The screenplay (by director Armando Iannucci, with Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Ian Martin and Tony Roche, the crew behind The Thick of It) blends comedy seamlessly with a manic pacing and the serious elements of the narrative. The jokes are non-stop from the start, the sense of humor bleakly sardonic throughout. Every other line is a jab at something or someone and I found myself, for perhaps the first time ever, watching an English-language film with subtitles enabled just to be sure I wasn’t missing anything (a big thanks to MPI Home Video for including them on their DVD). In The Loop is, in a word, vicious, an outright condemnation of a system that sends young men to die for little more than the personal political gain of those at the top. It’s also uproariously funny, and I haven’t laughed so much during a film in a long, long time.
Iannucci’s direction is a bit too television for my taste, and all-handheld HD camera work is starting to lose some of its effective immediacy after all the other feature films (particularly in the horror genre) and television series (The Office, et al) that have utilized the technique. His sense of pacing is spot-on, however, and In The Loop roars forward at full-tilt from the first frames. Exceptional casting rules the day, the long list of performers taking the swift-footed screenwriting in the appropriate stride. Capaldi and Paul Haggins reprise their enforcer roles from the television series, while Mimi Kennedy and David Rasche make for memorable dueling Assistant Secretaries of State. Steve Coogan (Hamlet 2) makes an important bit appearance as a constituent disgruntled about a collapsing wall, and Tom Hollander brings pathos to the dim-witted and quickly fading political star Simon Foster.
MPI Home Video released In The Loop to both DVD and Blu-ray on the 12th of January, and I highly recommend that those who, like myself, missed it in its limited theatrical run take the opportunity to catch up to it now. Both do the job of capturing the HD-cam photography, the Blu-ray being noticeably clearer and sharper if not much else. Extras are limited – a trailer, a tv spot, a nice collection of deleted scenes (28 minutes worth), and an extremely short (3 minutes, 17 seconds) look behind-the-scenes – but the film itself is more than enough to make the discs worthwhile and the price is certainly right (under $20 retail for the Blu-ray and considerably less for the SD DVD). Both English SDH and Spanish subtitles are available for the feature, the former of which I found very useful in preparing for this review.
This is a wonderful piece of acid political satire with surprising depth lurking beneath all the cock jokes (and believe me, there are a lot of them). I’ll stop short of calling it brilliant for my own petty reasons, but don’t let that dissuade you. In The Loop comes very highly recommended.
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