Over the last twenty years Armando Iannucci has proven himself to be one of the giants of UK comedy. Unfortunately, thanks to Australian television failing to show just about everything he’s been involved in from the groundbreaking news satire The Day Today and Steve Coogan’s three classic Alan Partridge series to his own sketch shows The Armando Iannucci Show and Time Trumpet, he’s pretty much unknown here.
Here’s hoping his first outing as a feature film writer / director changes all that.

Not so much a spin-off from his savage political sitcom The Thick of It (which the ABC has been showing here) as a version that takes place in a parallel world, In the Loop is either a hilarious comedy with a string of stinging political barbs mixed in or a fierce indictment of the western political system that’s also extremely funny.

It’s the present day, and in the UK the marginally competent Minister of International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) accidentally finds himself having a firm opinion on the looming western attack on the Middle East. This draws the attention of the PM’s ruthless and shockingly profane media enforcer Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) who bundles Foster off to the US on a “fact finding mission”.

There Foster soon finds himself the pawn of various pro- and anti-war factions in the US government including the pro-war Linton Barwick (David Rasche) and anti-war general George Miller (James Gandolfini). As war lurches closer and Foster proves more useless with every meeting Tucker is sent across the pond to make sure things turn out the right way – whichever way that turns out to be – while back in the UK one of Foster’s constituents (Steve Coogan) threatens to bring everything down over a crumbling backyard wall.

With a cast of characters whose main method of communication is insulting each other with some of the funniest and most inventively foul language around, calling this film brutal feels like an understatement. Its political message is hardly a cheery one either, as various sides ruthlessly plot and scheme towards end results they barely see to care about. But it’s so funny because it’s so confronting: to attempt to portray modern politics as being anything else would be selling the subject short.

Iannucci has put together a brilliant cast here, with the players from The Thick of It fitting in perfectly alongside the bigger names. Capaldi, playing his actual character from The Thick of It, is especially memorable: for all intents and purposes Tucker is basically The Devil and Capaldi plays him with a venomous glee that makes him completely compelling.

This isn’t a flawless film, especially if you’re someone who likes their movies to actually look like movies, but the small-scale approach of this-dialogue heavy film (shot almost entirely in corridors and crowded rooms) only highlights the high stakes they’re playing for.

“Political comedy” is often code for an unfunny lecture, but not this time. In the Loop is a comedy that should not be missed.

In the Loop opens in cinemas on January 21, 2010.
You can view the In the Loop movie trailer here on TheVine.