In the Loop (2009)

In the Loop is only nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, although why it isn't nominated for just about everything is beyond me. Is there an award for most inventive cussing?*

Based on TV series The Thick of It, co-writer and director Armando Iannucci has created a pitch-black satire that's almost certainly a hair's breadth away from being exactly right, which is what makes it so scary and funny to watch. The (never-seen) US President and the UK Prime Minister fancy themselves a war in the Middle East, but not everyone in their respective governments agrees. A single off-message word dropped in a radio interview by International Development Minister Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) is all it takes to kick the ramp up to international conflict into high gear. He's equally beset by political factions for and against the war, but it's the Prime Minister's own director of communications, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), who wields the most dangerous weapons: words and influence.

It's like The West Wing in reverse: instead of an idealistic group of people who want to change the world for the better united under a passionate, intelligent leader, a disparate group from both sides of the pond are too obsessed with their own careers and machinations to see clearly through the conflict they're helping create even as they try to negate it. In the middle of it all, there's a man so adept with one-liners and profanity that to add in his drive makes him look positively Shakespearean (if Shakespeare's characters said things like, "I've already told you to fuck off twice, and yet you're still here").

It's genuinely unsettling to realize that people no one elected can effect such catastrophic policy (and so quickly), so Iannucci et al. have the good sense to make it so funny that you keep from losing your head. Packed to the gills with recognizable faces and brilliant supporting work, the docu-verité shooting style and editing only heighten the feeling that what you are watching could be a dramatic recreation of the truth. Finally, Dr. Strangelove has found its true heir. A-

*Actually, if there were, In the Loop would have some stiff competition from Fantastic Mr. Fox.