In the Loop

Armando Iannucci co-writes and directs this feature comedy - a big-screen spin-off of the BBC series 'In the Thick of It' - satirising the inner workings of British and American politics as the powers-that-be attempt to 'sell' the deeply unpopular Iraq invasion to the public on both sides of the Atlantic. When British Minister of International Development (Tom Hollander) puts his foot in his mouth by announcing on national television that 'war is unforeseeable', the British government is sent into a spiral of chaos and spin propagated by the verbally aggressive Director of Communications, Malcom Tucker (Peter Capaldi). Foster soon finds himself bundled off to Washington on a fact-finding mission - where, in his naivety, he becomes the pawn of the Pentagon's General Miller (James Gandolfini) and Assistant Secretary of Diplomacy (Mimi Kennedy) in their mission to do their not-very-best to stop the war happening.