‘In The Loop,’ the greatest film satire of the Iraq War, turns 15

The movie spinoff of The Thick of It skewered both the U.S. and U.K. for their parts in launching a foreign boondoggle.

The Iraq War started in 2003. In the 21 years since then, Hollywood hasn’t been especially great at making great movies about that war — The Hurt Locker was the only one — or biting political satires about that subject or any other.  

That changed in 2009 with In The Loop. No, this British production wasn’t made in Hollywood, although it did feature some American actors and was set partially in the U.S.  But what In the Loop did do was craft a razor-sharp satire about how the Iraq War happened- due to a combination of cravenness, timidity, and malevolence by government officials on both sides of the Atlantic alliance.