In The Loop

**** - The only things I despise more than politics are politicians. Well, that’s not strictly true, as I have a very long list of things that I despise, and the items on the list tend to move around in position every so often, usually based on my ever-changing whims. However, having just watched “In the Loop” I can say that my first sentence is true currently. This film – which is sort of an expansion of a TV show called “The Thick of It” – is a satire of the political maneuvering that resulted in British support of the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The dialogue is largely hilarious, and a number of the performances were stellar, especially two extremely foul-mouthed Scottish political enforcers who used the word ‘cunt’ more times in a 106-minute span than I thought possible. The only aspects of this that I didn’t really enjoy were the odd, shaky camerawork that was probably intended to convey realism but was more fitting for a TV show than a theatrical release, and choppy editing that was a little distracting. In addition, there were some questionable casting decisions made in James Gandolfini as some kind of armchair general and Anna Chlumsky – who I don’t think has had an acting role since that movie from the early 90s in which, if memory serves, she killed Macaulay Culkin by making him get stung by thousands of bees - as a very annoying staffer. Still, it was an enjoyable movie.