In the Loop

While the underlying concept of writer-director Armando Iannucci's cynical satire about the incompetence of government officials is amusing, the actors' accents are often so indecipherable that much of the dialogue is lost unless you're acutely attuned to Brit-speak. Spun off from Iannucci's BBC series The Thick of It, the story revolves around a doltish low-level government minister for international development, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), who makes a verbal blunder during a BBC radio interview when he refers to war as being “unforeseeable.” His subsequent “clarification” compounds the confusion, giving the impression that Her Majesty's government backs the United States' aggressive stance in the Middle East, so the prime minister's foul-mouthed, ill-mannered director of communications, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), whisks Simon and his twerpy advisor, Toby (Chris Addison), off to Washington, DC, for damage control, where they meet with their American counterparts, including the antiwar assistant secretary for diplomacy (Mimi Kennedy), her dovish aide (Anna Chlumsky), a State Department hawk (David Rasche), and a sensitive army general (James Gandolfini). Both chaotically confusing and tiresomely inane (except for an inspired scene in which Gandolfini uses a toy calculator to explain the costs of war to Kennedy while they're hiding out in a child's bedroom), this is strictly an optional purchase. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include deleted scenes (28 min.), a behind-the-scenes featurette (4 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for an uneven film that was generally well received by critics.] (S. Granger)