The Laundromat Movie Review

The following is a movie review “The Laundromat” by Marc Primo.

Release date: 27 September 2019 (USA)

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Language: English

Production Companies: Anonymous Content, Grey Matter Productions, Topic Studios, Netflix, Sugar23

Producers: Scott Z. Burns, Lawrence Grey, Gregory Jacobs, Steven Soderbergh, Michael Sugar

Like a Wes Anderson-esque web of a story, Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat seems like it was told as a fairy tale for adults, but one that is not that easy to get. However, the complex tale of a widow following the stinking trail of insurance fraud is designed that way, perhaps just as how in reality, scammers will dupe you with so much details you’ll get confused and go along with anything.

Based on real secrets as the film announces in the beginning, this dark comedy about offshore financing institutions that do not exist but amass millions for a few gives audiences a front row seat to how the financial system really works. That is, if the viewer is patient enough.

Meryl Streep takes on the role of Ellen Martin, whose husband recently died with 20 others on a holiday to Lake George in New York, leaving many, including herself, traumatized. Problems arise when Ellen finds out that the insurance settlement for her husband’s death was a scam made via shell companies and offshore accounts. And like the proverbial Alice in Wonderland, Ellen goes down the rabbit hole to investigate how insurance fraud systems operate, leading her to a virtually unknown city in Panama. There, she discovers how over 200,000 companies have evaded taxes by opening up untraceable bank accounts.

Meryl’s fellow Oscar winner Gary Oldman and the brilliant Antonio Banderas serve as narrators and the omniscient duo who both explain the complicated money elements of the story via a series of lessons. Viewers might want to pause, rewind and replay a couple of times (since the film is available via Netflix), so they don’t miss any of their jargon and metaphors about the financial schemes being presented—and there are many. From those sequences, audiences are taken into a number of intersecting storylines that lead the characters to various situations that spin tales on how money is, indeed, the root of all evil.

Soderbergh somewhat experiments in The Laundromat, presumably to keep a very complex subject light for viewers, by breaking the fourth wall that tells the audience that the film addresses everyone, and that we are all prone to fraud.

Though audiences have seen the likes of The Big Short and The Wolf of Wall Street, The Laundromat presents the Panama Papers scandal with the use of human elements that make the audience a part of the film. One can’t help but ask how the greedy ones at the top become open to corruption, even at the expense of others, and how curiosity can indeed kill the cats in power.

Though the film offers an important perspective on the current financial scenario, it definitely isn’t for everyone, especially those who are oblivious to the system or do not care to know how it really works. And while Soderbergh’s latest release is certainly not light viewing, it serves as a valuable eye-opener with a star-studded cast as a big plus.

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