When her idyllic vacation takes an unthinkable turn, Ellen Martin begins investigating a fake insurance policy.
The Laundromat is the latest film directed by Steven Soderbergh, who has had quite a varied filmography to date (Oceans 11, 12 & 13, Logan Lucky, High Flying Bird, Magic Mike, and Unsane). Known for his experimental styles of directing (Unsane was shot entirely on an iPhone 7+), Soderbergh attempts another change of pace, directing this financial anthology based on the 'Panama Papers' scandal.
The style of film puts it in the same vein as Adam McKay's niche of political and financial educational dramatisations (ie. The Big Short aiming to explain the 2007-8 financial crisis, and Vice which showed how Dick Cheney became one of the most powerful vice-presidents in US history).
McKay's films are well-executed, using a singular narrative, and pausing whenever necessary to "dumb down" the terminology, using analogies and metaphors to ensure that everyone is able to follow what is going on, no matter how complicated it actually is. This use of meta-commentary is a clear and effective method of education and is helped further with the inclusion of balanced comedic elements. This sense of balance is something that McKay has gotten down to a fine art. The same can't be said for Soderbergh.
Soderbergh attempts to differentiate The Laundromat by utilising multiple narratives and turning a select few characters into our only fourth-wall-breaking sources of exposition. With a deeply complicated and convoluted scandal, the film would have benefited from a more direct storyline that followed one set of characters from start to finish. Instead, there are perhaps five individual stories, some which we view in one go, others that are split up across the film's 96-minute runtime. Jumping from one story to another disconnects the audience, and ends up making this confusing scandal no less confusing.
Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas play the role of our hosts and narrators throughout the film, trying to make light banter around what is going on throwing empty justifications at the audience with some thick accents that make understanding the exposition even more difficult. The Laundromat spends far too much time focusing on aspects that are unrelated to understanding the financial scandal, instead, choosing to spend time on marital affairs and infidelity. It suffices to say that the audience was on board that these were bad people long before these unnecessary scenes.
The end result is a film, that turns the main source of narrative direction into a subplot, limiting the amount spent focused on it, to a point that the exposition becomes cumbersome and uninteresting. The production is absolutely fine. Nothing wrong with that aspect at all, but the direction of the screenplay was sloppily executed, and the majority of attempts at humour fell flat.
The Panama Papers scandal is something that needs to still be talked about, and those taking advantage of the system need to be held accountable, but The Laundromat does a poor job at explaining the ins and out of how this all came about. Meryl Streep puts on a convincing and sympathetic performance, but it cannot save The Laundromat from being an uninteresting and uneffective attempt at educating the masses.