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Can we all just admit that television-to-film adaptations typically don’t work, and that they emerge as bloated episodes on the big screen? Or that they emerge with a distinct feeling of three or more episodes strung together? Well, prepare to be amazed as In the Loop functions on its own merits as a brilliant piece of wicked political satire with no prior knowledge of the show necessary to enjoy it all.
In the wake of our current never-ending political quagmire it’s almost difficult to even mildly chuckle at the lunatics running the asylum. Yet the sight of Peter Capaldi wrapping his Scottish brogue around a series of expletive-laden verbal tirades is impressive in the musicality and muscularity with which he attacks them. A personal favorite is a threat of sticking his cock so far down someone’s throat that it’ll come out their anus. That’s nearly avant-garde poetry in its maximalist prose and graphic absurdity.
Even better is how even the adults in the room are rendered into mere cartoons and we’re displaced into a phantasmagoria of chest-thumping egos clashing in one verbal sparring match and slapstick spectacle after another. Among all of the raucous personalities there’s the major plot of a hapharzd minister (Tom Hollander), who can’t seem to keep his foot out of his mouth, inadvertently supporting a US war based on questionable intelligence from a source dubbed “Iceman” and fending off a constituent who claims his office wall is destroying his mother’s garden (a hilariously deranged Steve Coogan).
In-between all of this is a State Department warhawk (David Rasche) fighting with a more stable-minded colleague (Mimi Kennedy) and a lieutenant that’s a bit of a dove (James Gandolfini). In the Loop isn’t afraid to make any of these people appear incompetent for their jobs or as fragile children warring on the playground, and this is funny in the spikiest way imaginable. After all, it’s a satire of the Iraq war and Dubya years, but there’s a relevance here as our current commander is saber-rattling with North Korea and in a persistent state of petulance over special investigations.
In the Loop will make you laugh out loud, and then squirm in a way that only truly good satire can. There’s too much of a kernel of truth here for comfort. Even when we want to pertend that adults are running things, there’s frequently plenty of evidence to the contrary. This one is just soundtrack to Capaldi calling everyone a cocksucker or telling them to go fuck themselves like a piece of classical symphony.
