In the Loop

Starring Tom Hollander, Peter Capaldi. Directed by Armando Iannucci. R13.

copyright IFC films

Relevant offers

Movies

Top action from Washington Clooney is convincing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Mystery and melancholy War horse Master director lights up the screen Holmes sequel an opportunity wasted Streep makes a riveting Iron Lady Soaring to the challenge Feast of films sure to suit all tastes

Sharply caustic and cynical, the fast-talking, madcap British political satire In the Loop – a movie spin-off of the TV series The Thick of It – is wickedly and wittily funny, and its spin on political spin will make you so dizzy you won't be able to walk or think straight afterwards.

Tom Hollander plays hapless British minister of international development Simon Foster, whose comment in a BBC interview about a possible US-UK invasion of an unspecified Middle Eastern country that "war is unforeseeable" is seized on by both hawks and doves.

It also earns him the wrath of Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), an angry, profane, venomous, insulting, controlling communications director for the prime minister.

Foster soon finds himself invited to sit in on a US "war" committee led by a State Department bureaucrat (David Rasche) whose brief is to justify an invasion, and who latches on to another seemingly innocuous Foster statement that "on the road to peace you have to climb the mountain of conflict".

Meanwhile, a State Department undersecretary (Mimi Kennedy), wanting to stop any precipitate, reckless invasion, is wooing an army general (James Gandolfini) with reservations and with whom she once had a fling – as well as enlisting Foster to help her cause.

The tangled tale also includes an array of inept or unlucky aides, while Steve Coogan shows up as a constituent of Foster's, complaining about a wall that ultimately proves useful to a desperate, exasperated Tucker. While the political leaders and political parties are not named as the story swings across the Atlantic from London to Washington to the United Nations in New York, it's obvious that the inspiration for this lampoon was the invasion of Iraq.

Filmed with hand-held cameras in a mock-doco style, In the Loop is often brilliant in shredding a mentality in which self-interest is more important than national best interest and where anything can be done, including altering the minutes of a meeting to reflect what should have been said rather than what was actually said.

Followers of politics will best appreciate In the Loop, but the movie is one of the best of its kind – with elements of Yes, Minister, Wag the Dog and Dr Strangelove to it – and one you practically need to see twice to take it all in, albeit with the risk of laughter being partly replaced by suspicions that this satire may actually be too close for comfort to the way inner government operates.

- © Fairfax NZ News