By Robert Bouffard
Making a movie about complicated financial intricacies can be tough. Before getting into your story, you have to explain so much of the technical terms and goings on just so the average viewer can understand what’s happening. In The Big Short, Adam McKay did this by having A List celebrities come in and out to explain everything in layman’s terms. Now, in The Laundromat, director Steven Soderbergh took a page out of McKay’s book to bring this complicated financial language to life onscreen.
Throughout the movie, Jürgen Mossack (Gary Oldman) and Ramón Fonseca (Antonio Banderas) appear to speak directly to the camera, explaining the ins and outs of shell companies and offshore accounts and how the financial system is set up that benefits the rich and hangs the poor out to dry. It is both effective and entertaining simply because of the natural charisma of these two actors. But at the same time, you start to realize the kinds of unethical, if not illegal, activities they are getting up to, and how it can affect the average citizen.
At the beginning of the movie, during a scene of voiceover, Mossack and Fonseca say that this film is not only about the people being portrayed onscreen, but “also about you,” the everyday people at home watching this film. Systems are in place to benefit people like these two and to take advantage of people like Ellen Martin (Meryl Streep).
According to Mossack and Fonseca, meek people are what allow them to do what they do. So many people don’t understand what they’re getting into, which allows people like them to thrive financially. Their idea is that money can solve all of their problems, but widows like Martin have trouble acquiring the insurance money due them after major life tragedies.
Focusing on the character of Martin – as well as other innocent victims in a series of vignettes – is this movie’s biggest strength. When there is so much financial jargon being spewed from so many of the characters, it’s important to stay grounded and understand the actual effect of these shady dealings.
While it is important to keep it relatable, the movie still contains a fair amount of fluff that is just way too technical to be either cinematic or good storytelling. But even during these scenes, Soderbergh works in incredible direction and camerawork. There are some truly masterful long takes that will leave you wowed at the amount of meticulous blocking and rehearsal that must have gone into making these shots a reality.
The most masterful of these takes is the closing shot, which goes on for about three minutes and brings a call to action to take down and avoid these unfair tax laws. In fact, this is the perfect movie to have a Netflix release. It is spreading a message that involves the kind of people who watch movies on such a service, and that is a genius move.