Movie Review: In the Loop

Armando Iannuci's "In the Loop", a delightful departure from the bromance formula of comedy that has dominated multiplexes for the past few years, moves along at a lightning pace with it's barrage of vulgarities spewing from all angles. Putting "The Office" and "The West Wing" in a blender, the film pokes it's fun at thickheaded warmongers, and it illustrates politics as little more than an elite bloodsport. While it's political satire may not be as topical as it was a few years ago, it remains an enormously energetic, intelligent, and terrifically performed comedy.

The inciting incident for the film is when Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), the British minister of international development, claims that "war is unforeseeable" on a radio interview. In his attempts to salvage the controversial line, he only digs himself into deeper holes: "to walk the road of peace, sometimes we need to be ready to climb the mountain of conflict". This is the sort of line that Linton Barwick (David Rasche), the head-honcho at the U.S. state department, needs to ignite his efforts in getting the war in an unspecified country in the Middle East rolling.

Comparisons to "The Office" don't only come from it's mockumentary style of filmmaking, but also in the romance between two young government workers: British Toby (Chris Addison), Simon's assistant, and American Liza (Anna Chlumsky), author of "Post War Planning: Parameters, Implications, and Possibilities" - known shorthand as "pwip-whip". But drawing us into these characters on an emotional level is not what the film is about - in fact, not one of these people is likable. The intricacies of the plot don't add up to much in comparison to the enormously sharp sparring matches of words.

The cast also includes a delightful James Gandolfini as a Pentagon general who, in one of the most memorable scenes of the film, calculates the potential loss of troops on a child's talking calculator, and the show-stealing Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker, the communications director to the British prime minister. Tucker's character is a vile one with a knack for stringing together his insults by the dozens in the midst of what appears to be a perpetual aneurism.

Although having a short running time, the film seems to run out of steam before the credits due to the exhaustive nature of the material. It's not a film for everybody - the plot is a bit dull (albeit intentionally), the characters aren't exactly pleasant company, and the humor isn't quite as broad as you'd expect from a summer comedy. That being said, however, an intelligent open-minded audience will find much to admire in the wonderful ensemble cast and their hilarious foul-mouthed exchanges.