The Laundromat (2019) | Netflix Film Review

The Panama Papers references the 2.6 terabytes of private data from the legal firm of Mossack Fonseca that was leaked to the press back in 2016. This data put a direct spotlight on the business practices of the wealthy, shell companies, tax havens, and anything else rich people use to continue to bathe in the glow of the misfortunes of the poor. It was horribly enlightening, and now director Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat has arrived to illuminate us all just a little bit further.

For 90-plus minutes, Soderbergh’s tale hangs on the occasional narration of lawyers Jürgen Mossack (Gary Oldman, whose exaggerated accent evokes memories of a poorly drawn Saturday Night Live skit) and Ramón Fonseca (Antonio Banderas, dapper and captivating) as they take us through various events that lead to the Mossack Fonseca scandal. Their main role here seems to exist solely as to explain the more complicated nuances of how these scandals – many of them legal – actually work. Essentially, they represent the film’s flow chart.

Also aboard for the ride are actors such as Meryl Streep, David Schwimmer, James Cromwell, Robert Patrick, Melissa Rauch, among many others who exist to give a focal point to the victims of the many crimes of the rich. Legality and morality are deeply intertwined with greed as we see firsthand how salacious the wealthy can be when desperately clamoring to gain and maintain excessive wealth. If anything else, The Laundromat will leave you desperately triple checking your personal investments.

Packed with enough stars to power 1.21 gigowatts, The Laundromat follows a fractured narrative that devolves into chaos, numerous actors inhibiting various characters and few are connected in any semblance of a sensible story. In fact, the only crime greater than the Mossack Fonseca scandal itself, is the utter disgrace of assembling actors of this quality and handing them a script that reads like Mad Magazine if it maintained a banking section. Every performance, aside from Oldman’s weird accent, is as strong as it should be. Sadly, the script is so meandering and clumsily assembled that it’s a complete waste of their combined talents.

The Laundromat’s biggest problem is that it has no idea what kind of film it wants to be. One moment, Soderbergh and friends attempt to recapture the magic of films like The Big Short; complicated issues handled with a wink and a smile as they mesh playful interaction with concise descriptors of what exactly occurred.

The next moment, the film tends to believe it’s a documentary of sorts, pointing fingers directly at the rich as actors monologue random talking points inherent to any recent Democratic debate. Too many scenes end with this sort of self-righteous aggrandizing of Hollywood’s well-documented position on the wealthy…while often forgetting many of their own are also a large portion of this very problem. Ending several scenes with moments of preaching from a pulpit instead of blending into a cohesive narrative is a true eye-roller and head-scratcher from a storytelling perspective. It is the cinematic equivalent to your Dad sitting you down to tell you all of the dangers you could encounter if you break curfew, instead of just answering your simple question of “what time is it?”.

Steven Soderbergh is one of the smartest filmmakers of his generation, and not many directors of his caliber can handle one ensemble film in their career, let alone the several he has already managed (the Ocean’s Eleven series, Contagion). Unfortunately, this is not one of them. By the end of the film, prepare to be more frustrated by the waste of talents involved rather than illuminated on a topic that absolutely deserves a proper exposé. Instead of cleaning up the confusion, this Laundromat just leaves us feeling dirty.