Saw a clip of the 100 best insults and In the Loop popped up more than once. I can't think of a better selling point for a movie. For some reason, none of the ads I saw previously emphasized the excellent dialog, instead promoting James Gandolfini as a selling point. Shockingly, that didn't work.
In the Loop wastes no time with the insulting gems. I think all the clips in the 100 best insults occur in the first 10 minutes. It also doesn't baby the audience. We're immediately thrown into the situation and get no explanations about anyone's reasons. The movie follows members of the UK and US governments talking about drafting a resolution for war in the Middle East. Some people are for, some are against. We follow a bunch of characters, including a UK minister, his new lackey, a US bureaucrat and her intern/secretary, another US bureaucrat that wants war, a higher level UK guy, position unknown, but he's Scottish and the purveyor of curse filled insults, so he's awesome. Some want war, some threaten to resign if they pass the resolution. There's also a report floating around, written by the secretary/intern, which weighs the pros and cons of war. There are far more cons. When the report leaks, the war mongers proceed undaunted, simply changing the aspects they want.
Maybe I'm an optimist, maybe I'm stupid, but I'd like to believe that people don't intentionally falsify information to justify war. Again, I could just be stupid. I do know statistics can be used to "prove" anything, so it's not as far-fetched an idea as I'd like. Coming up with the statistics, however questionable, seems more honest than outright lies, which they use here. That was a strange tangent.
Regardless of what's going on, and whether I even understood it correctly, the movie is hilarious. Reminds me of Wag the Dog, a classic, only better. It doesn't have incredibly improbable occurrences, like surviving plane crashes, driving the action.
It does bother me that we never find out why saying war is "unforeseeable" get's Simon Foster in so much trouble. His boss, the foul mouthed Malcolm, apparently wants war to be foreseeable, and eventually helps push the war resolution through, but reasons are never discussed. Since I'm fundamentally against war, the lack of reason is hard to swallow. While it bothers me, it's absence enhances the movie. Getting bogged down in that level of detail could have slowed the pace.
The cast is solid. The a-hole from the East India Trading Company shows his range playing a stammering idiot. I just realized Dharma's mom plays the US State Dept. official, Karen Clark. I've never heard of Peter Capaldi, who plays Malcolm, but the US needs more of him. And there's an Anna Chlumsky sighting!! And she still looks pretty good. It'd be nice to see more of her, but she doesn't seem to work in movies I watch.
First Viewing: 3+3+2+2+3 = 13