The Laundromat
THE LAUNDROMAT - NETFLIX
Steven Soderbergh is one of the most prolific film directors working today. He has dipped his toes into practically every genre at one point or another and, while not everything he touches turns to gold, they are rarely worth less than solid bronze. When paired Soderbergh’s experience with a script based on a biography about money laundering and crime — a genre that the director himself is no stranger to — and an incredible ensemble cast, then there is no reason that The Laundromat should be anything less than a home run. The end result is disappointingly nowhere near and while there are good individual ideas, characters and performances, the bizarre structure and lack of focus derail the experience on the whole.
Adapted from Jake Bernstein’s Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite, The Laundromat follows a large cast of characters including Ellen Martin (Meryl Steep) and Simone (Jessica Allain), as they get screwed over financially by a Panama City law firm and its two founding partners, Jürgen Mossack (Gary Oldman) and Ramón Fonseca (Antonio Banderas).
The film leaves a pretty bad first impression with Oldman and Banderas breaking the fourth wall to deliver exposition about concepts related to money and power. It is the kind of faux-clever dialogue that comes across as obnoxious and Oldman, in particular, is chewing the scenery to a ridiculous degree. This is not isolated to the first scene with the duo either; this specific framing device pops up multiple times throughout and every time it feels so tonally dissonant from the rest of the film that it becomes obnoxiously distracting. Soderbergh needed to have picked one singular tone and either make the feature a serious tale of corruption and how it affects lives or a self-aware comedy with elements of absurdism thrown in, but the resulting balance is overwhelmingly excessive.
The dizzying amount of characters and plotlines present here contain some terrific and engaging elements but just as many involved that do not work. Streep gives a solid performance but for someone who is receiving top billing, she disappears for sometimes upwards of 10-15 minutes at a time and her story does not have a satisfying payoff. The most significant plotline is one that involves Simone and her father Charles (Nonso Anozie). It is one of the only stories in the film that feels complete with an arc that has a satisfying beginning, middle and end. So many talented actors, such as David Schwimmer, Robert Patrick and Matthias Schoenaerts, give excellent performances but all are involved with minute screen time — thus do not leave the intended impact.
Technically, the film is well-made and features some standout elements. It is handsomely shot by Steven Soderbergh, who also serves as cinematographer. There are a lot of complicated long takes that are crafted with outstanding skill and the overall aesthetic implemented is clean and appealing. The score, however — by composer David Holmes — sadly is not anything memorable to behold. The editing by Soderbergh himself is a mixed bag. In terms of assembling scenes, it is nicely arranged and moves individual scenes along at a swift pace but in terms of structuring the film and creating a coherent vision, it misses the mark. There is a particular point in the middle where the cutting between the different scenes and characters is so rapid that it’s whiplash-inducing. Each story is not created equal, with some sequences fifteen straight minutes to breathe and others awkwardly chopped up and placed seemingly at random throughout.
The Laundromat had all the potential in the world to be a truly phenomenal and explosive film, a way to tackle the complex themes of corrupt big businesses and tax evasion head-on, but what is created is less than the sum of its parts. The lack of a central main character to latch onto creates a sense of disconnect and the structuring of the narrative does nothing to help fix the problems created. It is not a trainwreck by any means but it is stuffed to the brim with wasted potential, and arguably that is a far worse testament to behold.
The Laundromat is available exclusively on NETFLIX.