Mordant in the extreme, and often hilarious, “The Death of Stalin” somehow manages to acknowledge the murderous depths of Josef Stalin’s regime while rising to the level of incisive, even invigorating political satire. If it’s a romp, then it’s a romp that does what anything on this topic must do: leave audiences a little rattled, with a hint of ashes in the mouth.

The movie comes from director and co-writer Armando Iannucci, the creator of “Veep” and, on British television, “The Thick of It.” The latter inspired the 2009 comedy “In the Loop,” which tore 10 Downing Street and the Iraq invasion a couple of new ones. That film also tested the limits of corrosive profanity in modern screen comedy. Improbably, it passed its own test; the dialogue in that film may have been outrageously rough, but it had snap, bite and genuine wit in its corner.

Iannucci’s writing crew on “The Death of Stalin” operates at a similar, breathless velocity. Set in 1953, the story rooted in fact but crammed full of freewheeling inventions begins with beautiful music. Radio Moscow is broadcasting a Mozart concert featuring a pianist (Olga Kurylenko) of exquisite sensitivity. A phone rings in the recording booth; it’s Stalin, demanding a record of the concert just concluded.

This is a problem for the broadcast director (Paddy Considine), since no recording was made. In a manic blur, the director locks the concert hall doors and assembles an encore performance, which after a negotiation of 20,000 rubles the pianist agrees to, despite her loathing of the Soviet Union’s leader. She slips a little note to Stalin into the sleeve of the recording. Alone, relishing the music, the drunken head of state opens the slip of paper, laughs at its hostile contents — and has a massive stroke. “The Death of Stalin” is off and running.

Transitions of power are always a good start for dramas as well as comedies; the stakes begin high and escalate from there, and the multidirectional schemes and malignant energies keep the top spinning.

The key players are topped by top-billed Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev. His key adversary in the regime change: Lavrenti Beria, head of the security forces, mastermind of the gulags, keeper and executor of Stalin’s vast enemies list. Beria’s played by the wonderful actor Simon Russell Beale, whose Shakespearean training allows him to dash through great thickets of insult- and sarcasm-driven dialogue at top speed. At one point in “The Death of Stalin,” the desperate politicians break into a footrace to see who can comfort Stalin’s daughter Svetlana (Andrea Riseborough) first, and best. The way Beale proceeds, tanklike, arms outstretched, while shouting her name is worth the price of admission.

“You have a nice long sleep, old man,” Beria whispers to the stricken dictator when he’s finally alone in his chambers. “I’ll take it from here.” But not for long, with Khrushchev around. Jeffrey Tambor’s pathetic, lily-livered Malenkov; Michael Palin’s zesty Molotov (of cocktail fame); Jason Isaacs’ outrageously macho Zhukov; these are all droll turns.

If there’s a limitation in “The Death of Stalin,” it’s the nature and sound of the casting. Putting Buscemi and Tambor in the same setting as Beale and Palin, and letting everyone use their native dialects, leads to a dislocating quality.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

mjphillips@chicagotribune.com