The laundromat review

[Westside Steve]

 The laundromat
Netflix
R                       95 min

 I’ll be honest I really had no idea what this flick was going to be about. I had only half listened to a blurb saying something about political intrigue South America and period piece and while that’s the case it wasn’t exactly what I had envisioned. First of all the international Intrigue wasn’t related to South American dictators Etc. but toward powerful attorneys and corrupt corporate practices and the time period itself wasn’t the 1960s but just a couple years ago when the Panama Papers, a mountain of purloined private information was made public thereby unearthing a far-reaching financial scam. Still the subject matter had nothing to do with my desire to see this film at all. What caught my attention was the cast which included Meryl Streep and Gary Oldman two of the finest actors alive, probably two of the best of all time. Plus I’ve always liked Antonio Banderas though I don’t put him in that lofty category.
I won’t bother with a spoiler alert since this is really based on a matter of record or at least someone’s perception of the historical events. That being said I don’t suppose many people knew or cared about it then or even now but that has nothing to do with whether or not I enjoyed the motion picture. 
What I did expect was delivered right on the money and that was a couple of first-class performances by Streep and Oldman. She’s Ellen Martin, a middle-class widow whose husband Joe has died in a freak pleasure cruise accident and she’s embroiled in a battle with the insurance company. He’s a high-powered but crooked attorney, the son of probable Nazis who relocated to South America after World War II, hence his flawless German accent he adopts as the narrator of the film. So what in the world would bring these two completely different folks into each other’s sphere of existence? Well here’s the scoop which has more than a small similarity to the Kevin Bacon game.
The pleasure boat company has been sold an insurance policy that turns out to be bogus and while Ellen will certainly get a small settlement from them and a respectable amount from Joes insurance policy she will not receive the spectacular windfall she hopes for. Now this average housewife is on a crusade to track down those in charge of the multiple entities which appear to be phantom shell corporations that lead her to a dead end. Well kind of as we will see you later. The film is actually broken up into a series of vignettes uncovering all sorts of financial skullduggery fueled by greed and bribery wrapping its slimy tentacles around shady businessmen and politicians all the way to the very top in countries all around the world.
Not all the stories here will come to a happy ending but supposedly thanks to the unearthing of the stolen information and shining light on these unscrupulous business practices somebody somewhere got busted and truth and justice are served. Frankly I think it’s something of a stretch to link garden variety crooks selling fake insurance policies with international intrigue but it’s certainly an interesting and entertaining take. And I have no doubt there’s more than a kernel of truth in the suggestions here. For me the place that the logical sequence of events takes a little bump is at the very end of the film where we find out who John Doe the whistleblower is. (Have you noticed that whistleblowers are either heroes or villains depending upon whose Ox is being gored? ) In conclusion Streep breaks character to give a short political lecture at the end of the film placing the fault of all that is evil under heaven squarely at the feet of United States campaign finance practices. Those particular points of view along with condemnations of the super rich might be more believable if they weren’t coming from someone near the top the list of political donors and worth somewhere in the ballpark of 90 million dollars. Also that the Panama Papers, at the heart of this entire kerfuffle, were exposed by a German newspaper in 2016. Do the math.
At any rate THE LAUNDROMAT, of course meaning the organization the laundress money not an actual building full of coin-operated Maytags, isn’t the only politically charged diatribe against financial corruption but it is one of the best acted and most entertaining. You are free to draw your own political conclusions but as far as the motion picture I enjoyed it.
B
WSS