Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Laundromat’ on Netflix, Steven Soderbergh’s Satirical Shotgun Blast at the Panama Papers Perpetrators

After a brief theatrical run, The Laundromat now sees its international Netflix streaming debut. It’s a star-studded satirical dramatization of the real-life Panama Papers expose, where a whistleblower leaked hundreds of thousands of documents detailing the practices, legal or otherwise, of offshore financial entities. Director Steven Soderbergh’s dizzying output ranges wildly from frivolous entertainment to biting social commentary — and The Laundromat is undoubtedly mostly the latter, with some elements of the former.

THE LAUNDROMAT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “Based on actual secrets,” reads a title card. Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas, playing lawyers Jurgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca respectively, talk directly to the camera about the history and philosophy of finance. There are jokes about bartering bananas; they walk by cavemen trying to discover fire. It’s a big, long, complicated virtuoso shot. Oldman’s German accent is wacky.

Another title card: “The meek are screwed.” Hannah (Meryl Streep) and husband of 40 years Joseph (James Cromwell) board a tourist ferry in Lake George, New York. It capsizes. Cut to Joseph’s funeral in suburban Michigan; Hannah mourns next to her daughter (Melissa Rauch). The ferry owner/operators (David Schwimmer and Robert Patrick) bought a cheap insurance policy, which comes back to haunt them — paperwork was shuffled without them knowing, and they weren’t covered, which means no settlement for the victims of the tragedy. Hannah was going to take the money and buy a fancy Vegas condo, only to find out A) the check will be way smaller than promised, and B) the condo was sold out from under her to people with piles of cash. “Cash. Who pays cash?” Hannah asks her realtor (Sharon Stone). “Russians” is the reply: big laugh!

Hannah begins pulling on some threads because she has nothing better to do, and I say that in the best possible way, because even if she wasn’t retired, getting to the bottom of this meek-screwing probably would be the most noble thing to do. Not that the average person from middle-America flyover country has any real power, anyway. And it’s like searching for the bottom of a bottomless well. Her endeavor is as frustrating as it is revelatory.

I feel like I’ve thus far spent too many words summarizing a small percentage of the movie. The narrative hops to the island of Nevis to Panama to China to… other places. I lost track. There are more title cards, about bribery, shell companies, etc. Characters played by Jeffrey Wright, Matthias Schoenaerts, Rosalind Chao, Nonso Anozie, (ACTOR NAME REDACTED) and more cycle in and out. Tracking the core plot is akin to trying to keeping your eye on the pea under one of the shells as they move, or trying to pick out the one red sock tumbling around with a full load of clothes in the dryer. I think that’s probably the point?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Laundromat‘s nearly impenetrable tangle of concepts and characters and financial rigamarole and general self-aware wiseassery is cut from the same cloth as The Big Short.

Performance Worth Watching: If I didn’t put Streep here, I’d be tarred and feathered. No one Streeps like Streep. But as always, even when she’s Streeping hard and wide and broad, she’s a joy to watch.

Memorable Dialogue: “‘Bad’ is such a big word, for being such a small word,” Mossack says when confronted with the potential illegality of his actions.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: If you want to know what shell companies are and how offshore accounts move money around in order for it to remain in the possession of one-percenters and out of the possession of plebeians, the movie explains it in a mostly entertaining manner. I perhaps lack the capacity to fully grasp every detail of such slippery legal skullduggery, but, as in The Big Short, the broader elements of the story come through. Namely, the comedy and the outrage and the Streeping. Especially the outrage and the Streeping. Both are quite prevalent in the final scene.

Granted, not all of The Laundromat works. It’s episodic, convoluted and self-satisfied. There’s look-at-these-clowns shade thrown at the manipulators that should be more righteously satisfying, and the manipulatees lean toward caricature. And the celebrity-cameo parade tends to jolt us out of the movie, underscoring its coy cleverness.

Yet Soderbergh’s visual and thematic ambition brings us back around. His camera is active and his staging, dynamic. He has something to say, and sometimes it’s too much to say, but he finds a compelling way to say all of it. The movie isn’t as slight as the Ocean’s films, as dense as Traffic or as playful as Out of Sight; it’s more like The Informant!, that is, pretty good, but not great. You’ll wish Soderbergh had jabbed the hot button harder. But when so many films are passive, it’s hard not to overlook a film’s dysfunction and praise it for being provocative.

Our Call: STREAM IT. More often than not, lesser Soderbergh is still worth watching. This is one of those times.

Your Call:

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Laundromat on Netflix