In the Loop

There's a breed of character in UK humour that has invective down to a fine art: the Basil Fawlties, the Blackadders, the Bernard Blacks. To that glorious lineage add Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), the PM's director of communications from In the Loop, the thunderously funny debut film by Armando Iannucci. Tucker is a foul-mouthed monster prowling the corridors of power: when a colleague uses the word "purview" he erupts, "This is a government department, not some fucking Jane fucking Austen novel! Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your..."

Iannucci created Tucker for the 2005 BBC sitcom The Thick of It, basing him on Tony Blair's feared press secretary Alistair Campbell. "He's notorious for swearing, and also for ringing journalists at 1.30am and saying ‘I'm about to get you sacked,'" the director explains. "Campbell and others are this new breed of enforcers - Karl Rove was the Bush one. On paper they're in charge of getting the government's message across, but gradually they take over and start telling ministers what the policies are."

In the Loop resurrects the character for a feature-length swipe at the kind of machinations that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. With Downing Street and Washington both itching to send troops into an unnamed Middle Eastern country, a bumbling minister, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), lets slip a comment on TV that seems to back war. After much bollocking by Tucker, Foster is dispatched to America to take part in the US government's secret ‘Future Planning Committee' (War Council). Foster idealistically believes he can prevent the conflict, which is also opposed by the Pentagon's General Miller (James Gandolfini) and the US Assistant Secretary for Diplomacy (Mimi Kennedy). But then Tucker arrives to manipulate events.

"We didn't want it to be seen as about Iraq," Iannucci says. "It's a comedy, and comedy is all about exaggeration, so you make things up, and then politicians come up to you and say, ‘How did you find that out?' It's a worrying, worrying thing."

A veteran writer of seminal TV comedies The Day Today and I'm Alan Partridge, Scottish-born Iannucci researched the film in Washington where he was shocked by the youth of so many government powerbrokers. "I met a 22 year old who was sent to Baghdad to help draw up the constitution of Iraq. He was 22." The idea of unruly children running the world is carried through the movie; as one character says: "They're all kids in Washington. It's like Bugsy Malone with real guns."

In shades of the Chaser-APEC scandal, meanwhile, the director reveals that he was able to enter the US State Department simply by flashing his BBC pass. "I expected to be escorted in but I was just left to wander around. So I took photographs, because we wanted [the sets] to look right. And because this was brought up when the film came out in America they've now undertaken a major review of their security procedures. Hillary Clinton is safe as a result of this film." Nick Dent

In the Loop Screening from 21 Jan.