James Gandolfini and Mimi Kennedy are administration officials trying to keep the peace.

British TV director Armando Ianucci, the steady hand behind Steve Coogan’s masterful Alan Partidge shows, presents this warring room comedy about U.K. and U.S. government functionaries working feverishly as the  two nations prepare to invade an unnamed Middle Eastern country. In the Loop may not be a visionary satire of Strangelovian proportions, but it’s brisk, abrasive fun.

The President and the Prime Minister are never present onscreen as their cabinet members, advisers and assistants scurry about trying to start or stop a war (that may not exactly be justified) before an all-important U.N. resolution vote is to be taken. Ego trips and personal relationships are omnipresent, helping to form policy that may result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. The excellent cast with James Gandolfini, Mimi Kennedy, David Rasche, Anna Chlumsky, Tom Hollander, Toby Wright, Coogan and a host of others never misses a beat. But it’s Peter Capaldi, who’s worked for Ianucci in the TV series The Thick of It, who shines the most, tearing through every scene as a rage-filled British official with a brilliant, vicious insult for everyone in his path. He is relentlessly funny as is In the Loop, right down to the closing credits with a great joke about I ♥ Huckabees.

●Read Afflictor’s Top 20 Films of the Aughts list.