YOU CAN'T MAKE this stuff up, and director/writer Armando Iannucci didn't have to. In the Loop has Iannucci, a well-known figure in British television comedy, doing a scathing sort-of version of the dawn of the Iraq invasion. A high-ranking member of the U.S. presidential staff rushes to war; a celebrated army officer opposes him behind the scenes. James Gandolfini's Lt. Gen. George Miller is a slobbier, more wrathful version of Colin Powell—profane, but nobody's fool. Mimi Kennedy plays Miller's best ally, Karen Clarke, a career State Department diplomat with dandruffy hair and teeth that seem to be disintegrating during the middle of a crisis. Gandolfini and Clarke's characters are the film's moral center—the two people operating with goodwill. We want to follow them through this sonata of collapsing spines and raving, swearing political careerists. But too often Iannucci just won't let us. Chief among the abusers are the White House warmonger, the Rumsfeldian Linton Barwick (David Rasche), a pious creep who keeps a live hand grenade on his desk. Clarke and the State Department try to discover his hidden scheme. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the British PM's press secretary, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), keeps up both fact-finding and fulmination. Tucker is a Scottish telephone screamer whose favorite task is calling in underlings to his office for "a bollocking" (a disciplinary session). Tucker's two favorite bollockees are Simon Foster (Tom Hollander, this British comedy's Alec Guinness), a minor MP from an inglorious district, and Foster's tousled, Ron Weasley–like aide Toby (Chris Addison). Foster is meant to be a chair-warmer at the U.S./U.K. diplomatic meetings. Unfortunately, the MP grabs unwarranted attention by blurting out something to the press. Foster's later attempt to restate his misstatement is a fine macramé of words, far too tangled to reknit here. The lines have something to do with the "mountain of conflict" that cannot be anticipated by the speeding aircraft of destiny, a mountain that cannot be predicted, only climbed. Certainly, this diplomatic obfuscation is inspired by Rumsfeld's "known unknowns" speech, but it is even more slippery.In the Loop presents a relentless festival of wit. When Foster has to go back to the boondocks to meet with his constituents—"from the White House to the shite house"—he's plagued with a stubborn yokel; Steve Coogan, wearing a wool hat and an air of blocked grievance, is a delight in the part. So is Gandolfini, with his croaking supersized wrath. His ogreish grimace, as he watches the vile Tucker try to outmacho him, is a serious threat in a film full of empty ones. It all must have looked great on paper. The scathing verbiage pours forth like a gusher. It's not that the talk is too fast to comprehend (some will find it so), it's that it might have been better focused through the smaller aperture of a TV screen. The small-camera rack-focusing and the relentless interiors give you a kind of jet lag as you watch the actors tantruming under illness-inducing fluorescent light. A movie needs so much more than cold wit. In the Loop is a case of smartness outsmarting itself. It keeps you helplessly laughing but sends you home with a cold, dismal feeling.

IN THE LOOP (Unrated; 106 min.), directed by Armando Iannucci, written by Iannucci, Jesse Armstrong, et al., photographed by Jamie Caimey and starring Peter Capaldi and James Gandolfini, opens July 31 at Camera 3 in San Jose and the Aquarius in Palo Alto.

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