Review of In the Loop (2009) by Quinn R — 26 Jul 2010

Incisive but repetitive. Largely due to its topicality, ?In the Loop? enjoyed good press and reviews when it debuted demonstrating that time is everything. By the time the film came out the U.S.?s invasions of Afghanistan and particularly Iraq had already long revealed themselves to be unwinnable quagmires.

Thus a film that ridicules the run-up to the Iraq war looks prescient. However, the movie is really about the office politics rife at the soft middle management layer that exists in all large organizations.

These are the ?assistants to??, ?Associates??, ?under secretaries??-titled organizational climbers who have achieved a state with no real power whose job is to make themselves look good at the expense of others at the same level in the hopes that they will eventually be chosen to rise to real power.

The film does an excellent job of playing out the power struggles between and among American and British politicians as they deal with carrying out the debate necessitated by democracy even though the decision is already a done deal.

It is also particularly good at laying out the unpleasantness of the assistants to these officials who are forced to deal with the very personal issues of their bosses. The major problem with the film is repetitiveness.

About the halfway point, Peter Capaldi?s Malcolm Tucker and his underling, who is effectively the same character, start chewing out various other players in florid, outrageous obscenities. These scenes play over and over again almost verbatim, quickly become tiresome and eventually tedious.

Apparently, the script was some 230 pages and had to be severely cut, one wonders how several versions of basically the same soliloquy repeated a dozen times survived. In short feel free to shut off the film after the first 90 minutes ? you?ve gotten the point.