loop

Peter Capaldi and Chris Addison as Malcom Tucker and Toby Wright in Armando Iannuci's "IN THE LOOP."

The characters in Armando Iannucci’s IN THE LOOP eventually talk about war, though always as something distant that they have either read about in books or seen movies of. It’s even implied that the United States’ General Miller (James Gandolfini) doesn’t really have the amount of war experience he claims to have. No one is even sure if he’s ever even killed a man, much less seen any combat. Yet there is talking, as I mentioned. I can’t recall a pause for silence in this film that lasted for more than a few moments. Most of the conversations center around who will look bad and what not to say and what should be said to keep careers afloat. Or even sex. Or a tumbling wall in Northhamptonshire. When someone decides to have a serious conversation about the logistics of going to war in the Middle East, it doesn’t occur in any of the government facilities we see. Instead, it happens in a child’s bedroom, with General Miller using the child’s talking calculator to sum up how many troops are available to send in. 12,000. And that’s just how many they would send in to initially die. You still need a few around afterwards so you can say you won.

There are two sides to the debate on whether or not to go to war led by the British Prime Minister and U.S. officials. On the U.S. side for war, there is Linton Barwick (David Rasche), who keeps a live grenade on his desk as a paper weight. He plays squash and is followed around by his assistant who “hopes to play squash one day.” When Barwick sees statements he doesn’t like in a colleague’s minutes, he changes the statements in the minutes. That colleague would be the other side of the debate, Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy) who worries about dental problems and sits in a bathroom as her assistant Liza (Anna Chlumsky) helps her stuff tissues in her mouth to stop her bleeding gums. Liza is also ambitious. She wrote a report detailing the pros and cons of going to war.

Then there is Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) , the British Secretary of State for International Development, and his newly hired assistant Toby (Chris Addison), who find themselves in the middle of this conflict after Simon inadvertently told a news outlet that war was “unforeseeable.” Simon means well, but is ineffectual. Thr Americans refer to him as a “meat puppet.” When things get hard for Simon, he retreats to a box of mints. As the Prime Minister’s Communications Chief Malcom Tucker (Peter Cappaldi) who tries to keep Simon’s statements in line tells him, it’s best if he not speak.

Tucker is a man who works so hard he claims at one point to sweat spinal fluid. As played by Peter Cappaldi, I laughed because I actually expected said fluids to start pouring out of his body. Tucker performs his duties on behalf of the Prime Minister with a combination of tenacity and verbal abuse that includes threats to stab someone to death with their own shinbone, which he would of course pull from their body himself.

While the current war in Iraq is never mentioned directly, only a war in the Middle East, the movie clearly draws parallels with events leading up to the Iraq conflict, down to an interesting manifestation of reliable intelligence to lead the nations into a conflict. The humor in each character’s lines works because they naturally come out of each characters’ clearly defined personality, from Simon who is terrified of taking a stand and constantly fumbles his words in public, to Tucker, who is like a freight train of fertilizer about to run down a school bus full of nuns.

My opinion on the war in the movie? Send Tucker in to the war zone with a megaphone for two days.

4/5 - Nearly classic!

4/5 - Nearly classic!