 |
||||
|
In The LOOP
An inexperienced, low-level minister, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander, toe-curlingly excellent), is asked an unexpected question during a radio interview. The results are catastrophic. His off the cuff response about ‘...climbing the mountain of conflict...’ makes him a target for the Washington apparatchiks currently visiting London in search of support for military intervention. Shipped over to Washington for covert negotiations, Foster finds himself a whipping boy for the attack-dog spin doctors of government and a pawn in the war game between the hawks and the doves. The principal spin maestro is Peter Capaldi’s awesome Malcolm Tucker, a volcanic, bilious, cyclone of a man, the government Director of Communications charged with the task of keeping the team on-message. Tucker takes threats, insults and character assassinations to unforeseen levels of quite magisterial profanity. As Malcolm desperately firefights the torrent of gaffes and leaks and faux pas, we follow the Brits into the corridors of real power as the wheels grind toward the inevitable outcome, greased by words taken out of context, and egos engaged in Machiavellian power play. The naturalism of the camera work gives us a fly on the wall perspective, a real sense of eavesdropping and seeing what we are not meant to see, that lends the film an alarming degree of plausibility. As The Times puts it: “It’s cynical, aggressive and volcanically profane. It features a script that crafts its scabrous insults with the same meticulous care and creativity employed by Michelangelo during the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling". The satire steams and fizzes like concentrated sulphuric acid. It is blisteringly offensive. Armando Iannucci’s debut feature film In the Loop is the kind of movie that makes you proud to be British”. Very, very funny. But, be warned – this film contains language that some viewers may find offensive.
|
|||
