‘The Laundromat’

Before ‘Anatomy of a Bribe’, there were the ‘Panama Papers’ (2016). Eleven point five million leaked documents from the law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca revealing, among other things, the exploits of numerous shell corporations and offshore accounts used to engage in fraud and tax evasion.

A complex and far-reaching scandal, the ‘Panama Papers’ are put in terms we can just about wrap our heads around in ‘The Laundromat’ (2019), Steven Soderbergh’s Netflix feature starring Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, Jeffrey Wright and Nonso Anozie.

Centering a series of characters adversely affected by Mossack Fonseca’s playing fast and loose with their insurance, bearer bonds and the like, the film starts with the story of the widow Martin (Streep) who loses out on compensation for her husband’s boating accident death because the insurance company is ultimately owned by Mossack Fonseca, which is being investigated for fraud.

The list of swindled souls goes on including the daughter of an obscenely wealthy Nigerian businessman whose hush money only exists on paper and then basically not at all, and Gu Kalilai, a Chinese businesswoman who doesn’t take kindly to an increased price for money laundering.

Well-cast and equally oiled by Oldman and Banderas’ Mossack and Fonseca – two debonair, cocktail-sipping fraudsters who charmingly trace the dog-eat-dog money machine from prehistory to present day – ‘The Laundromat’ gives us a duo of shameless, unapologetic narrators who simply tell it like it is.

That being: The rich and unscrupulous get richer and the meek get screwed.

Striking an odd, darkly humorous tone and (oddly, perhaps even offensively) casting Streep as a Panamanian employee of Mossack and Fonseca replete with large prosthetic nose and thick accent, the film is an uneven and effects-focused exploration of one of the world’s biggest data leaks, highlighting the highs and seemingly short-lived, if not fatal, lows of major corporate tax avoidance.

Made in the mould of ‘The Big Short’ (2015) inasmuch as complex financial ideas are simplified for the layman and the cinema, ‘The Laundromat’ takes things a step further and pulls the viewer into the real world as Streep appears as Streep and calls for “reform of America’s broken campaign finance system”.

Illuminating, somewhat lopsided but noble in its purpose, this star-studded take on 2016’s anonymous exposé is worth a stream to disgust and remind us that the global financial rot goes much deeper than fish.

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