U.S. Gen. Miller (James Gandolfini, right) locks horns with the British prime minister's communications chief, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), when an off-the-cuff remark leads their nations towards a Middle East war in the satire In the Loop. (Alliance Films Media)

Take such vintage British satires as I’m All Right, Jack and Yes, Minister, raise the stakes to the level of international warfare, and you have the new acid-etched political comedy In the Loop.

In the Loop employs a classic comic formula — the naïf whose well-meant bungling causes calamity — and then doubles it to hilarious effect.

Armando Iannucci’s debut feature is a wicked fictional spin on the kind of backroom skullduggery that brought about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The movie employs a classic comic formula — the naïf whose well-meant bungling causes calamity — and then doubles it to hilarious effect. The two innocents here are Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), a rookie U.K. cabinet minister who can't keep his foot out of his mouth, and Toby Wright (Chris Addison), his baby-faced aide, whose laughable attempts at swagger can’t hide the fact that he’s a clueless novice in matters of love and war.

When Foster, minister for international development, is asked during a radio interview about a possible conflict in the Middle East, he blurts out that “war is unforeseeable.” He intends to sound vague, but in his position, it’s tantamount to admitting the British government is preparing for a fight. Foster’s gaffe sends the prime minister’s communications chief, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), into a fury — a condition at which he seems to operate 24/7. As Tucker hustles to put out this small fire, Foster inadvertently lights a bigger one. Ambushed by reporters, he gets tripped up trying to form a metaphor and utters something about “climbing the mountain of conflict.” Tucker can’t believe it. “You sound like a Nazi Julie Andrews!” he exclaims in his snarling Glaswegian accent.

Foster’s unintended provocations bring him to the attention of U.S. officials, both the hawks and the doves. Sent to Washington, D.C., he ends up a pawn of Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy), the leftie secretary for diplomacy, who is trying to ferret out a secret war committee, as well as of her right-wing nemesis Linton Barwick (David Rasche), who heads said committee. Foster’s new PR flack, Toby, is little help — in fact, he proves a spectacularly gauche right-hand man. On his first evening in D.C., he manages to inadvertently leak state secrets to CNN and jeopardize his recent marriage by sleeping with an old flame, Clarke’s protégée, Liza Weld (Anna Chlumsky).

Director Iannucci is the keen comic mind behind the BBC TV series The Thick of It, of which In the Loop is a semi-spinoff. Capaldi first played Malcolm Tucker in that mid-2000s political satire, and the film’s screenplay is by the series’ five writers (Iannucci, Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Ian Martin and Tony Roche). Although Hollander’s bland, bemused Foster is at the centre of the madness, the movie is really a showcase for veteran Scottish actor Capaldi. As the gleefully nasty Tucker, he’s Don Rickles as translated by Irvine Welsh. Scuttling through offices like a crab on amphetamines, he insults anyone within eyeshot and drops so many F-bombs per sentence he’d even make Gordon Ramsay blanch.

Bumbling British government minister Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) inadvertently backs a U.S. war in the Middle East. (Alliance Films Media)

Capaldi’s character is apparently based on Tony Blair’s former press secretary Alastair Campbell (who was not impressed with this film). Certainly, Tucker is a world away from Sir Humphrey Appleby, his counterpart on the classic series Yes, Minister. Where Sir Humphrey (Nigel Hawthorne) was a smooth obfuscator, Capaldi's salty-tongued Scot is a pitbull spoiling for a fight — perhaps an indication of how uncivil British politics have become since the 1980s.

The cast includes other alumni from In the Thick of It and a cameo from another past Iannucci collaborator, Steve Coogan (of Alan Partridge fame), as an obstreperous constituent from Foster’s rural riding. For North American viewers, however, the most familiar face is beefy James Gandolfini, a.k.a. Tony Soprano, playing one of those level-headed Pentagon generals for whom war is only a last recourse. Gandolfini leads the film’s U.S. contingent, which includes a sleek performance from Rasche as the smug warmonger and a delightfully eccentric one from Kennedy as his careworn foe, who is almost sidelined by a gory dental crisis. This is probably the first film in which bleeding gums have been used as a comic device.

Iannucci and his writers also have fun with the perceived age gap between British and American civil servants. Capaldi’s ageist Tucker regularly disses the young pups surrounding him — he calls poor Toby a fetus — and it only gets worse when he meets the kid hotshots running Washington. As someone warns, the U.S. government is “just like Bugsy Malone, but with real guns.”

Most effectively, though, the film taps into the often cringe-inducing embarrassment of the Bush-era “special relationship” between the U.S. and U.K. When Foster and Toby arrive in Washington, they’re minnows in a massive pond, struggling ludicrously to look as if they know what they’re doing. Even the raving Tucker is cut down to size by Gandolfini’s military man, who dismisses him as just a “scary little poodle.”

For all the sharp lines and shrewd observations, though, In the Loop falls just short of a first-rate satire. The plot grows convoluted and then finally runs out of steam. Its attack on Washington also feels slightly dated. With Bush, Cheney and the gang gone from the White House, a comedy involving secret war committees seems — happily, I’ll admit — after the fact.

In the Loop opens in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver on Aug. 21.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.