Traditionally, a “MacGuffin” is a plot device of little importance. It’s what the entire movie revolves around — something everyone is trying to get to and you, as the viewer, haven’t a clue what the hell it’s supposed to be.
There are enough MacGuffins in “In The Loop” to fill a trilogy of suspense films. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Everything in this brilliant British satire revolves around exaggerated MacGuffins that only serve to illustrate how ridiculous the characters are for chasing them. And, of course, because they’re all policy wonks, it’s perfectly realistic.
“In the Loop” follows a crisis in American and British politics being controlled far from the center of power (the president and prime minister are never shown and barely mentioned). The story follows Minister for International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander, “Pirates of the Caribbean” series), a semi-confident, yet ultimately spineless MP who gets caught on BBC Radio calling a war in the Middle East “unforeseeable.” The statement quickly turns him into an easy target for everyone else’s political goals. The extremely vulgar Director of Communication for the Prime Minister Malcom Tucker (Peter Capaldi, reprising his role from British sitcom “The Thick of It”) wants him to keep his mouth shut on a war his office is engineering, Assistant Secretary of State Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy) and Lt. Gen. George Miller (James Gandolfini) want to use him as a voice of dissent against the coming conflict and his press assistant Toby Wright (Chris Addison) simply wants to make it through his first day on the job.
Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., Clarke’s assistant Liza Weld (Anna Chlumsky, “My Girl”) is trying to downplay a paper she’s written that, if released to the press, could stop the run up to war, but jeopardize her career in the State Department.
Of course, we never know the full contents of Liza’s paper. Or what Foster’s true thoughts on the war are. Or what the war is about. Or, for that matter, who the war is against. MacGuffins abound.
And frankly, who’d want to focus on such things when the frantic process of political intrigue is staged like a British “Broadcast News” for international diplomacy?
Dialogue is king here, with the shot-for-shot exchanges between Foster, Tucker and their associates doing more for character development in the first major scene than most films do in an entire 90-minute run. The rapid-fire insults and pithy remarks are what drive the film, with Tucker’s at-any-cost command sailing upon waves of f-bombs and equine-phallus references and making him, without a doubt, the breakout comedic force of this film.
However, other brilliant caricatures of dysfunctional government should not be lost behind the Scotsman’s vulgar smokescreen. American David Rasche’s portrayal of rival Assistant Secretary of State Linton Barwick provides the perfect counterpoint to Tucker. Barwick is an astute, perfectly calm and confident hawk with a grenade as a paperweight who refuses to swear (preferring instead to substitute letters with asterisks) and leads America to war by swift committee meetings and deft euphemisms. Gandolfini’s Lt. Gen. Miller is also sorely underappreciated below the heft of all these flailing characters. His portrayal of a politically maneuvering anti-war general seems to almost be a slight critique of Gen. Wesley Clark, but the commentary he provides on the military in general seems to be the most interesting point of this movie — even the stiff upper lip of the military quivers sometimes.
And such nuanced characters are essential for a movie structured like one of Shakespeare’s late romances–a convoluted, ridiculous plot designed to elicit as much laughter as the absurdity of the characters.
The difference is this story doesn’t end with some great resolution or uproarious conclusion. As with director Armando Iannucci’s classic character Alan Partridge, the brave face put upon by most of the inadequate, bumbling protagonists eventually gives way to utter disaster and, in that way, the story ends on a sour note.
So, it’s a bit dark, but you don’t even feel it by the time it’s done. With all those MacGuffins increasing the distance between real life and the film’s crisis, the world could be burning and you’d still find yourself laughing at how incompetent the players are.
Yet, if that makes “In the Loop” a black comedy, it is one of the most uproarious, putting it in prime position as possibly most accurate and hilarious skewering of international politics since “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb.”
5 stars out of 5.
