Armando Iannucci's icily brilliant satire on the bumbling, mendacity and self-hating subservience which formed the basis of Britain's military adventure in Iraq was recently the subject of a remarkable article in this paper - by Alastair Campbell. The former prime ministerial press chief appeared to attempt an elaborate pre-buttal both of the movie itself, and the way he personally expected to be portrayed on BBC TV's The Culture Show, for which he had recorded an interview about the film. His article displayed a weird sort of prickly insouciance, particularly on the subject of the character based partly on Campbell, or at any rate his reputation: the ferocious PR attack dog and all-round sociopath Malcolm Tucker, memorably played by Peter Capaldi.
Having unsubtly implied in his piece that director and star had bottled out of a face-to-face meeting with him for the cameras, Campbell airily claimed that he was, in the end, "bored" by their film. Read the article online, however, and you will see that his chief emotion is clearly not boredom, but anger: simmering, semi-suppressed anger. And this uncompromisingly vicious satire intuits anger as a key part of this government's secret culture, embodied by the horrendous Tucker spewing forth bile behind the scenes and shouting at ministers and underlings: the poison sac that drains away impurities from our rulers' public face of niceness. In fact, In the Loop might persuade future historians to see suppressed macho rage and shame as a key part of both ends of the New Labour story, from the Kinnock disaster in 1992 to the Iraqi debacle just over 10 years later - and perhaps even the McBride fiasco.
Iannucci's superb film, shot in the docu-vérité style of the original TV show The Thick of It and boasting a cracking script by Jesse Armstrong and Simon Blackwell, with Iannucci, Ian Martin and Tony Roche, is the first really satisfying, really fearless dramatic assault on the scandal of Iraq. Its only problem is what has admittedly been an excess of pre-release hype in recent weeks. But it is easily strong enough to survive that.
War drums have begun to thump over the Atlantic, but America still isn't entirely sure and Tucker is incandescent with rage at new minister Simon Foster, played by Tom Hollander, for departing from the government's cloudily neutral "line" in a radio interview. He had said that war was "unforeseeable", a neo-Heseltinian evasion that effectively implied that it was not impossible. Flustered and nettled at the consequent mega-decibel bollocking from Tucker, Foster gives another interview stammering that Britain could theoretically "climb the mountain of conflict". An apoplectic Tucker shrieks that this makes him sound like a "Nazi Julie Andrews".
Foster's cringing doublethink makes him the darling of both America's hawks and its doves, both of whom want a classy Brit to legitimise their views. The progressives are led by veteran liberal assistant secretary Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy) and General Miller, a Pentagon brass hat who loathes civilian warmongers but remains uneasily loyal to the military. This intelligent and well-observed performance from James Gandolfini is easily his best work since The Sopranos.
The meanie hawks are led by Sen Linton Barwick (David Rasche) and his creepy, dead-eyed policy nerd Chad: again, a tremendous performance from Zach Woods. The British contingent makes star-struck visits to Washington and the UN in New York, including eager-beaver assistant Toby, played by Chris Addison. All except Tucker are overawed by American glamour; Foster's maladroit interventions start brush-fires which Tucker extinguishes with the gasoline of rage, and Toby's fling with Anna Chlumsky's cute Washington policy aide Liza sets the scene for international catastrophe.
The high-velocity insults flying around have a ferocity, obscenity and surreal inventiveness which is tremendous: there simply isn't space to give any sense of them here, but I was pleased to see Paul Higgins's return as Tucker's terrifyingly abusive assistant Jamie. Iannucci, Armstrong et al are impressively at home in both the British and American settings, although inevitably there are more verbal fireworks this side of the pond. The gags are first-class and they never let up.
Tom Hollander gives a delicious impression of a Mini-Me Blair, a vacuous, niceish guy who wants to do the right thing, or as much of the right thing as is consistent with career survival, and is cunningly persuaded by Tucker that despite his impotent anti-war misgivings, he can exercise a "restraining influence" by not resigning. His final comeuppance is a stunning defeat without honour.
Where In the Loop scores is in giving you its story not from the generals' point of view, nor from the footsoldiers', but from the standpoint of the subalterns, the mass of hapless middle-rankers who have most to lose personally from a sudden rush of unmanageable events. It is their culture of panic that flavours the film, their sense of at all times not knowing what's going on. The title, of course, is taken from George Bush Sr's famous claim that as a humble vice-president in the 1980s he was "out of the loop" on the secret Iran-Contra payments. Whatever the truth of that, it is an all too accurate description of the hapless Lizas and Tobies and Simon Fosters of this tale: they really are out of the loop.
Tom Lehrer once said that Henry Kissinger's Nobel peace prize made him renounce satire. News of Tony Blair's new job as Middle East envoy might have had the same effect on modern comics, but fortunately not on Armando Iannucci, who has given us the sharpest, funniest film of the year.
