In the Loop begins quietly enough with low-ranking British government minister Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) doing a ho-hum radio interview during which he blithely calls the possibility of a war in the middle east “unforeseeable.” This tiny slip of the tongue reverberates for two hours, and the movie never gets quiet again. On the contrary, it blares nonstop, in what is perhaps the most profuse and striking display of verbal pyrotechnics to hit the big screen in years. A scathing portrait of modern statecraft, In the Loop understands words as weapons of the most dangerous variety, and dispenses them with dizzying, crackling wit.

No sooner does Foster’s blunder get out than Malcom Tucker (Peter Capaldi), the Prime Minister’s director of communications, goes into damage-control mode. A walking sinew and eternal fount of rage, he berates Foster (“You’re too radically ineffectual to have gotten this job through any means except nepotism or death!”) and sends him on a fact-finder to the U.S. in hopes of quieting the incident. No such luck. Foster’s unthinking remarks (“Britain must climb the mountain of conflict!”) become virtual bumper stickers for the gathering war machine in the States, and Tucker is obliged to chase after him in order to provide necessary spin.

From there the film ping-pongs between D.C. and Downing Street in an ever-complicating series of agendas, intrigues, and romances. Anglo-American relations are here depicted as a delicate and ongoing argument wherein the tiniest misstep (say, an offhand remark about the war) can impel massive forces into action. We’re meant to understand diplomacy as a grim, ugly business conducted chiefly by cutthroats and idiots. Because it’s comedy, we’re also invited to believe that they’re to a person armed with the combined verbal command of both an auctioneer and a sailor. It’s not far from the wicked badinage of All About Eve, only fortified with profanity, which makes for some exhilarating exchanges when the ensemble cast also includes James Gandolfini as an arm-chair general, Steve Coogan as a small-minded crack-case, and a grown-up Anna Chlumsky as an ambitious diplomatic aide.

Director Armando Iannucci has a knack for catching lightning in a bottle, and clearly allows his talent a lot of room for improvisation, but it comes at expense of visual dynamism. He employs the same ad hoc, hand-held camera style that The Office has by now trademarked. In the Loop is so acidly funny, however, that most audiences likely wont notice or mind the unfortunate waste of the big screen.