Review: The Laundromat

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Adam McKay's "The Big Short," a chronicle of the 2008 financial crisis, has introduced to moviemaking a now oft-borrowed style of presenting complex information - actors portraying characters (or as was often the case in "The Big Short," portraying themselves) who stop in the middle of a scene's action to describe how a particular thing works (derivatives, for example).

McKay used the stylistic trait again - but to much lesser effect - in last year's "Vice," a mixed bag biopic on former Vice President Dick Cheney. Steven Soderbergh has adopted the style as his own in "The Laundromat," a star studded drama that feels more like a series of short stories that all have something to do with the Panama Papers data dump of several years ago.

It helps the film that the scandal, although complex and likely confusing to some, makes for compelling viewing material, and the picture has righteous anger bubbling below the surface at how the 1 percenters of the world have prevented, as the movie points out, the meek from inheriting the earth. However, that style incorporated by "The Big Short" feels a little worn out in Soderbergh's film, and the schtick involving narration from two crooked attorneys who run shell companies and are portrayed by Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas wears a little thin.

It is Meryl Streep - no surprise there - who carries the film as a woman named Ellen Martin whose husband (James Cromwell) died while taking a ferry boat cruise after a wave struck the ship. Ellen tries to navigate the settlement process and gets screwed, all the while we discover that the ferry boat company (operated by Robert Patrick and David Schwimmer) also get shafted when it turns out the insurance they've purchased through a con artist (Jeffrey Wright) in the Bahamas is a scam.

The numerous instances of corruption coursing through the film's various stories all point back to the company operated by Mossack and Fonseca (Oldman and Banderas), showing the international reach of shell companies and the damage caused by them.

In one story, a businessman's (Matthias Schoenaerts) dealings with the Chinese leads to a murder. In another, a wealthy man (Nono Anonzi) who's having sex with his daughter's college roommate uses bearer shares as capital to prevent his family members from turning him. This sequence, which is equally funny and tragic, is the best of the film's stories.

But Streep's Ellen is the hero of the film. She tracks down Wright's shady character in the Bahamas and puts in some legwork to get to the bottom of Mossack and Fonseca's corrupt enterprise, leading to a monologue of sorts in the final sequence during which we learn that the actress has been portraying more than one character in the film (it's a genuine surprise). By the picture's end, you might not completely understand shell companies, but you can comprehend enough to be enraged.

Soderbergh is a director who bounces back and forth between studio fare (his "Ocean's 11" movies) and low budget indies with experimental attributes (most recently, "High Flying Bird"). "The Laundromat" falls somewhere between these two types of pictures. Its cast is full of A-list actors, but its style and spirit feel more in line with his lower budget fare. It doesn't always end up working - its stylistic choices occasionally get in the way of what the film is trying to say - but its material is riveting enough. Plus, it's proof that Netflix is going somewhat out on a limb with its original content. The film is certainly worth a look.