The Laundromat (2019)

The Laundromat (2019)

6/10

Starring

Meryl Streep

Gary Oldman

Antonio Banderas

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

The Laundromat can at first come out strange, you have to hold your breath to get through the first five minutes of the movie, before you realize you are watching a drama/documentary. Dramatized with a mix of comedy to tell the tale of the famous Panama Papers which exposed many rich people.

It showed us the illegitimate ways they were trying to hide their money in shell companies around the world especially in places where there were tax havens. Everything done is legal, but the crime was where the money was coming from and where it is going. Everyone who has money was implicated, but as long as their source of money was clean and their spending it was also clean, they was no crime committed.

A pet baby of Steven Soderbergh the movie is based on a book titled Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite by Jake Bernstein.

The movie also showed the various ways many of the people got in, it showed us that the people who used these method of hiding their money from taxes were from around the world. It also showed us how some of the people involved, had so much greed that it was just about time before someone knew what was happening.

A whistle blower who hacked the company was the person who released the papers to the press. This is not a spoiler to the movie, this is something we all know. It is how the movie was able to spin this tales starting from a couple on their way to their honeymoon and ending with Meryl Streep breaking the third wall to pass a message to us (okay, maybe that is a spoiler).

When tragedy struck the couple the woman Ellen (Meryl Streep) got almost nothing for her husband’s death from the insurance. As it so happens the boat company insured their company with a fraud insurance company. Which exist when you are paying your premium, but then does not when you have an accident, file for a claim and need them to pay you. Get ready for some running around before you get the message that the company you are looking for does not exist.

Ellen had her eye on an apartment facing the place where she first met her husband. She was showing the place off to her daughter and grand daughter when the place was bought from under her by some Russians. It was her decision to investigate these people that led her to see that neither them or the insurance company who were supposed to pay for the accident exist.

What she did with the info, the challenges she faced are either made believe or true, but you have o catch this on Netflix to find out.