“…Climb The Mountain Of Conflict…”
When Britain’s staggeringly inept Minister of International
Development gets interviewed on Radio (a fabulous Tom Hollander as Simon
Foster) – in between his babble about strides made with diahorrea - he rather
stupidly seizes the opportunity to score some brownies points for himself by
answering a question on American Military intervention in the Middle East.
Knowing nothing about anything four miles past the pier at Margate – Simon
spouts out the first sound bite that comes to mind. He says in his pint-sized
wisdom that ‘war’ is merely “unforeseeable”.
Milking the obvious gaff and nondescript word - the media
goes apeshit. But his monstrously foul-mouthed and fearless boss Malcolm Tucker
who was listening to the broadcast in his offices (Peter Capaldi in full-on f-word
fire-spitting form as Britain’s Minister for Communications) wants to string
Simon up by a part of his anatomy that you really shouldn’t touch. Then at a policy
meeting involving American Pentagon types and 10 Downing Street lackeys – Simon
once again stumps up more inane wordage when name-checked by the American
powerbroker Karen Clark who is heading the meeting (a superb Mimi Kennedy). His
ability to sully International diplomacy seems to know no bounds – but outside
on the pavement when he’s cornered by a canny TV crew about his “unforeseeable”
comment – he really dips his feet into a vat of political excrement when he tries
to talk his way out it with more beatnik-gibberish by saying “…to walk the road
of peace sometimes we must climb the mountain of conflict…” Something needs to be done. So Simon and his bickering worker
bee assistant Toby Wright (the ever impressive Chris Addison) are sent to
America on a ‘fact finding’ mission. Naturally things can only get worse – and with
any military manipulative luck – escalate into all out war…
The first thing you notice about “In The Loop” is the
stunning acidic script – ball-breakingly funny, observant and sharp like a knife
through a knob of rancid ministerial butter – its genius keeps coming at you in
scene-after-scene and is tearful precisely because 99.9% of it is true. Throw in
a troop of truly fantastic British and American actors relishing every delicious
UN-PC second of it (the much-missed James Gandolfini and David Rasche are
particularly brilliant) and you’re going to laugh and wince a lot.
The BLU RAY picture quality is fabulous – defaulted to
1.85:1 Aspect ratio – the print fills your entire screen and is never anything
less that spot-on. And the clarity slyly adds to the feeling of observing ‘real
time’ madness while the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio gives the voices a chilling
in-your-face immediacy. Subtitles are English and English for the Hard Of
Hearing. The UK BLU RAY has exclusive interviews and Commentary with Writer
Director Armando Iannucci and actors - Tom Hollander, Peter Capaldi, Chris
Addison and Gina McKee. There’s a Trailer, Webisodes, Deleted Scenes and a
Script to Screen Comparison features also.
In the horrifying times we find ourselves in – and with
political correctness and cowardice seemingly poisoning every TV station – the
world and frankly democracy itself ‘needs’ stuff like this. Besides any movie
that has the lines –“…we’d like the presence of carbonated and non-carbonated
water…” gets my vote.
“In The Loop” is the very best kind of political jabbing and
like “Four Lions” deserves a place in the pantheon of modern-day satire
masterpieces. Own it and thank the Gods for a sense of humour...
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