In the Loop (2009)
Directed by Armando Iannucci
The US President and the UK Prime Minister are planning on launching a war in the Middle East, but—behind the scenes—government officials and advisers are either promoting the war or are trying to prevent it.
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What critics compared In the Loop to
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Themes
A Wag the Dog, or maybe even a Dr. Strangelove, for the Iraq War, it goes behind the scenes at 10 Downing Street and in Washington, DC, to show how non-existent data and deceptive semantics can be twisted into the deaths of thousands by the ruthless and feckless.
Imagine a mashup of Dr. Strangelove and Wag the Dog, and you've got the general idea.
Drawing upon Wag the Dog, Dr. Strangelove and This Is Spinal Tap, this sardonic tale is adapted from the critically acclaimed BBC series The Thick of It.
But Iannucci, bless him, made the same realisation that Stanley Kubrick did when he was making Dr. Strangelove : when something is too absurdly awful to even contemplate realistically, the only way to treat it is as a colossal black joke.
Showing how politicians, in all their petty ambition and narrow self-interest, can be every bit as dangerous as Weapons of Mass Destruction, this is Dr Strangelove for the post-9/11 era.
From Tucker’s baroque threats of violence (“You'll find yourself in some medieval war zone in the Caucasus with your arse in the air”) to his radioactive sarcasm (“I'm sweating spinal fluid here”) to his creative cussing, beanpole Capaldi is as ferociously curdled as Richard E. Grant in Withnail & I, and just as much a legend in the making.
Shot in a style akin to one of Armando Iannucci’s satiric mockumentaries, the film replicates the simple aesthetic humor of In the Loop in its fly-on-the-wall observation and use of editing as a means of hammering home the most devastating punchlines or crafting jokes out of cutting away from arguments as they reach fever pitch.
Already the premier political satirist of his era, In the Loop director and Veep creator Armando Iannucci pulls off his most impressive feat yet, turning the corpse-strewn power struggle that followed Joseph Stalin’s sudden death into a lacerating and disturbingly relevant farce.
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He also starred in other films like “Get Shorty,” “In The Loop'' and “All The King's Men.”
With James Gandolfini in a fleeting role as coarse CIA head Leon Panetta, the actor virtually stumbles into the room straight out of “In the Loop,” Armando Ianucci’s brilliant satire of the institutional dysfunction that lead the country to war.
Unlike true satires, such as Dr. Strangelove, In The Loop, or The Great Dictator, Jojo rarely points the humor at the villains of the film.
Winterbottom has often worked with Coogan, as in 24 Hour Party People and The Trip to Spain , and if the new film resembles Veep and In the Loop at times, that might be because the director is here collaborating with Armando Ianucci’s frequent writing-and-producing partner Sean Gray.
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In the Loop pushed boundaries with its dialogue, but it had a brain to boot.
(In this alternate, better reality, of course, he would also lead meaty nongenre movies and find scores of unforgettable small parts like the one he played in In the Loop.)