In the Loop

The film is about the run-up to the Iraq War, and the word Iraq is never spoken. The character names are changed and the country is unnamed; what is shown is the bureaucratic mechanics of the road to war across 2002 and 2003. It is a half-spinoff from Armando Iannucci's television series The Thick of It, with Peter Capaldi carrying Malcolm Tucker over. Iannucci's method treats the script as a skeleton. The actors improvise around it and he assembles the best takes. In one improvised scene James Gandolfini became angry enough that Capaldi dropped out of character. Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Iannucci and Tony Roche wrote it, and it was nominated for the Adapted Screenplay Oscar. Tom Hollander, Gina McKee and Gandolfini fill out the cast. Who it is for: viewers who see politics as a chain of incompetence rather than conspiracy, and who like fast, foul-mouthed comedy. Who it is not for: anyone put off by swearing. Much of the humour rests on the inventiveness of the insults, and some of it does not survive translation.