Director – Armando Iannucci
Starring – Tom Hollander, Peter Capaldi, Chris Addison, Steve Coogan, James Gandolfini, Gina McKee
Out Now
Armando Ianucci’s BAFTA-winning TV series, The Thick of It, was an intensely satirical fictionalisation of the day-to-day absurdity of British politics. Inept politicians blunder their way through policy changes, accidentally sending explicit emails to small children and bitching about their receptionists. Shot in documentary style, it was a bitingly funny and scarily believable take on what goes on behind closed doors at Westminster.
In the Loop continues in the same satirical vein, and expands it to an international scale. Many of the original cast from The Thick of It appear, some reprising their original roles.
Tom Hollander plays an incompetent minister who, after making inappropriate comments about a possible war in the Middle East, is bundled off to Washington. There he meets statesmen and a military general who looks suspiciously like Tony Soprano, and continues to make a bit of an arse of himself; all the while being hounded by the PM’s muscleman of spin, played by Peter Capaldi.
Although no specific country is named, the events in the film clearly mirror the build up to the invasion of Iraq. This, however, does not mean that detailed political knowledge is required in order to laugh at the ineptitude of those involved. The characters are all very human and hugely believable as ordinary people struggling to get on in politics.
The translation of The Thick of It from small to silver screen is largely a smooth one, and the fly on the wall documentary style serves to give the whole film a greater degree of realism. The driving force of the plot is somewhat diminished due to the expansion of the half-hour television episode into a feature-length film, but it never stalls however, and the sheer number of brilliant one-liners keeps the audible laughter levels high. Iannucci is famous for encouraging a great deal of improvisation from his cast, which gives the dialogue a slightly rougher, more natural feel. Despite this, the strength of the script still shines through in all its profane glory. And be warned, there are a lot of expletives, most of which are articulated by Peter Capaldi, who must surely be the world’s most gifted profanity mutterer – not since Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction has anyone made swearing sound so beautifully poetic.
This is not to say that the film is a one-man show. There isn’t a weak link in the cast, although the American actors can’t quite match the deadpan, cringe-worthy comedy that the Brits have perfected in recent years. However, this is a minor quibble and should not detract from what is a sharp, relevant and fantastically funny political satire.
Verdict – Sharp, smart and uproarious, In the Loop is a fine example of political satire, a genre rarely explored on modern-day cinema screens.
Four and a half Stars
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