In the Loop (2009)

Not even five minutes in to Armando Innucci's IN THE LOOP, based loosely on a British TV series, the communications director to the prime minister refers to diarrhea as "ass-spraying mayhem."

IN THE LOOP, you had me at hello. A master class of profanity and intellectually superior insults, IN THE LOOP tells the behind the scenes story of what happens when Britain's mild-mannered Prime Minister Simon Foster is recorded in an interview as saying that a war waged by the US and UK in the Middle East is "unforseeable." His verbal faux pas is not in line with the rest of the government's thinking, and Foster's attempts to rectify his image problem dig him a deeper hole.

Foster is backed, no make that manipulated, by Malcolm Tucker, played like a tea and crumpets version of Tony Montana by the genius Peter Capaldi, who was excellent this past summer in the recent Torchwood miniseries. If you think the quote I included earlier was foul, know that it comes close to being one of the few things I can even get away with saying here. Tucker has an f-word or three for everyone in his path and explodes off of a whif of incompetence.

What IN THE LOOP is really about, however, is the concept of bullshit (sorry, no other way to say it). To sit and watch the characters in this film spin ideas and language around until original intentions are misplaced or reformed is to get a real glance (even in a work of fiction) of how governments twist and lie. And while that should make us angry, it is a device employed to hilarious effect here. So manipulated is the logic of IN THE LOOP's verbal sparring that one of the film's most quiet and deeply philosophical moments centers around a debate in the back seat of a limo as to whether or not doing what is wrong is, perhaps, more heroic than doing what is right. After all, it takes balls to fly in the face of acting in good and clean conscience, and these guys do it every day.

The actual plot of IN THE LOOP is complicated enough that explaining it here might confuse you further, though you have to trust me that it is not in the least confusing when you're watching the film. It involves, as one would suspect, a supporting cast of lower-level players leaking documents and spinning statements. What the film never does is involve either Tony Blair or George Bush. In fact, neither name is spoken in the film. The movie smartly reminds us how many people are working their butts off to have the privilege of telling our figure-head leaders what to think. Tucker is quick to point out, both physically and verbally, how hard he is working, seen at one time sprinting across Pennsylvania Avenue and yelling into a cell phone that he's "sweating spinal fluid."

While Capaldi is the performance centerpiece of IN THE LOOP, he is surrounded by solid supporting players. Exchanges between Mimi Kennedy and James Gandolfini as an American diplomat and general, respectfully, are frequently naughty and consistently funny. Tom Hollander makes Simon Foster a lovable screw up, the only political screw up "visible from space," we learn at one point when a British newspaper features a cartoon of Foster sitting atop the Great Wall of China. And, surprisingly, former child star Anna Chlumsky, still completely recognizable as the girl from "My Girl," has wit and bite as an intern.

But the star of IN THE LOOP is the language and the writing, and it won't be a surprise to anyone who watches this movie why it received a nomination for the Adapted Screenplay Oscar this year, even if that nod likely came at the expense of "Fantastic Mr. Fox," probably the only other film that could match this one for punchlines and sheer wit. Whether one character is referring to another as a "Nazi Julie Andrews" for referring to the impending conflict as a mountain of conflict to be climbed or classical music played loudly becomes as irritating as heavy metal to another character - "Turn that f-ing racket off! It's just VOWELS! Subsidized, foreign vowels!" - IN THE LOOP, I suspect, will become a movie-quoter's delight. Try checking out the "memorable quotes" section of the film's IMDB listing...it goes on for days.

I've read some negative reviews of the film that state that there's nobody likable in IN THE LOOP, no character you can root for or get behind. This is true. But sometimes, even though it's rarely, you can enjoy a film without one in that "Glengarry Glen Ross" sort of way. Clever, Mamet-y cursing, after all, can be just as entertaining as watching characters with morals who do the right thing...or the wrong thing to demonstrate their heroism.

3.5 out of 4