In the Loop

In the Loop is a 2009 British satirical black comedy film directed by Armando Iannucci. It is a spin-off from Iannucci's BBC Television series The Thick of It (2005–12), and satirises Anglo-American politics, in particular the invasion of Iraq. At the 82nd Academy Awards the film was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Plot At a time when the United Kingdom and the United States are contemplating military intervention in the Middle East, the UK Minister for International Development, Simon Foster, unintentionally states during an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that war in the region is "unforeseeable", so the Prime Minister's Director of Communications, Malcolm Tucker, castigates Simon and warns him to toe the line. Toby Wright, Simon's new special advisor, is dating Suzy, who works in the Foreign Office, and he takes the credit when she gets Simon into that day's Foreign Office meeting. The US Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomacy, Karen Clark, opposes military intervention, and, at the meeting, she flags a report—titled Post-War Planning: Parameters, Implications, and Possibilities (PWPPIP)—by her aide Liza Weld about the pros and cons of intervention, which features many more cons than pros and contains caveats for most of the pros. Ambushed by reporters afterward, Simon rambles that the government must be prepared to "climb the mountain of conflict", and is again chastised by Malcolm, though the Prime Minister decides to send Simon to America to gather information about problems that might arise for the UK if there is a war. Back in Washington, D.C., Karen and Liza deduce that the hawkish US Assistant Secretary of State for Policy, Linton Barwick, named his secret "war committee", which was accidentally referenced during the Foreign Office meeting, the Future Planning Committee. Karen teams up with Lieutenant General George Miller, who opposes the war because he believes the US has an insufficient number of troops available, and invites Simon to the upcoming meeting of the Future Planning Committee to "internationalise the dissent". Toby thoughtlessly leaks the existence of the committee to a friend at CNN, and then meets up with Liza, who he knows from college, at a bar, and they end up sleeping together. Due to Toby's leak, the Future Planning Committee meeting is swamped. Both Karen and Linton turn to Simon to back their respective causes, but he struggles to say anything meaningful in support of either.