ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies

ARMANDO Iannucci has been the driving force behind some of the funniest shows on British television, from I’m Alan Partridge to The Thick Of It. The Glasgow-born comedy guru has nurtured a life-long ambition to direct a hit British film and now achieves that with some style in the merciless political satire In The Loop.

British politicians are perfectly capable of providing enough acts of sleaze, corruption and incompetence to fill a dozen films. Iannucci’s talent lies in his ability to shape our perceptions of reality into a bile-ridden fiction where the comedy is all the more funny for cutting so close to the truth.

Imagine an episode of Yes, Minister dipped in vitriol and you will have the measure of this painfully funny farce.

Tom Hollander leads a fantastic cast with an endearing performance as government Junior Minister Simon Foster, a dithering incompetent who spends most of his time sitting on the fence. When he breezily declares that war in the Middle East is ‘unforeseeable’ it is such a canny choices of word that both hawks and doves consider him to be in tune with their views.

A fact-finding mission to Washington finds him entering the snakepit of international diplomacy like the proverbial lamb to the slaughter. Among those eager to undertake the slaughter are vicious, foul-mouthed director of communications Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) and American General Miller (James Gandolfini).

A scathing attack on the immorality of modern politics, In The Loop is marvellously inventive in the use of invective, cleverly constructed and profoundly disturbing in what it reveals about the way the world is run. Highly recommended.

Nationwide release

Director: Armando Iannucci
Cast: Tom Hollander, Peter Capaldi, James Gandolfini, Chris Addison, Gina McKee, Steve Coogan.
Screenwriters: Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Tony Roche, Armando Iannucci
Certificate: 15
Running time: 106mins
Country: UK
Year: 2009