The comedy IN THE LOOP premiered at Sundance and was released in UK in Spring but it made its way to the recent L.A. Film Festival before it finally opens limited here in U.S. theaters on July 24th. My friend Deborah Olliff is a big fan of the lead star, Brit actor Tom Hollander, (check out thomagination) she went to the screening so I asked her if she could please share with us what she thought of the movie. So without further adue, after the jump,… here’s Olliff’s review of IN THE LOOP…
The absurdity begins with a twisted misinterpretation of a response by Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) the British Minister for International Development during a radio interview. Taken off guard, Foster says that war is “unforeseeable.” Ferocious Malcolm Tucker, the British prime minister’s director of communications (Peter Capaldi) hears this and it all spins wildly out of control from there and before anyone realizes what is happening both sides are headed for war. The backstabbing office politics are nonstop and hilarious. However, here is the underlying thread of the hapless minister who is failing to live up to his principals while his world collapses around him.
The writing, acting and camerawork are all brilliant. In fact, In the Loop is so richly layered it will take several viewings to take it all in and truly appreciate how artistic it is. Especially since the audience is laughing so hard that one misses some of the lines.
After the screening there was a great Q&A with Mimi Kennedy, Anna Chlumsky and David Rasche. Mimi Kennedy had a great comment that stuck with me: “It’s important to know where the power resides and what the effect of the power can be. That’s what we gotta understand…the lesson of this movie.”
Tom had a lot of screen time and was second in the credits. After all it was his character that started the plot rolling. I tried to keep my write up unbiased. Hehe. They were all fantastic. A lot of really talented peoplet was fun listening to Mimi Kennedy, Anna Chlumsky and David Rasche talk about it thought David had a lot of it wrong. He named to wrong writer when he said they had one that was in charge of swearing. And his little story about how Armando got in to secure areas in Washington was slightly off. He said he made a pass that said “HBO” when in reality Armando just used his BBC pass.
I can’t wait to get the DVD. I hope it will have lots of extras and deleted scenes. After all they shot the entire 260 page script and then cut from that so you know there is some great stuff that got cut.
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Cast: Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Chris Addison, Mimi Kennedy, James Gandolfini, Anna Chlumsky, Gina McKee, David Rasche, Steve Coogan, Paul Higgins
Director: Armando Iannucci
Screenwriters: Armando Iannucci, Simon Blackwell,Jesse Armstrong, Ian Martin, Tony Roche
Producers: Kevin Loader, Adam Tandy
