The Laundromat (2019)

The Laundromat arrives with the smug confidence of a film that has done its homework and intends to make sure we know it. Steven Soderbergh assembles a glittering ensemble to explain offshore finance through three interlocking tales of fraud. Meryl Streep anchors the proceedings as Ellen Martin, a widow swindled out of insurance money. Jeffrey Wright and Cristela Alonzo appear in support. The most discussed casting decision remains Streep as a Panamanian woman named Elena, a brownface choice that plays as a liability instead of a credential. There is no LGBTQ content, no climate concern, no body positivity, and no neurodivergent framing. These absences are not sins of omission. They are simply outside the film's narrow ledger.

The film's true passion is economic. Mossack and Fonseca serve as narrators, guiding us through shell companies, tax havens, and the machinery that hides cash for the superrich. The finale has Streep as herself demanding US campaign finance reform before striking the Statue of Liberty pose. That is an eat-the-rich sermon with footnotes. Feminist gestures remain modest: a wronged widow seeks justice, and Gu Kailai is depicted as a ruthless power player, but the story treats these as character traits inside a corruption narrative. Racial consciousness is similarly thin. An African billionaire and his daughter figure in the money-laundering web, and the cast is internationally varied, yet the target is class and corruption, not racial structures. Historical revisionism is mild. The Panama Papers and the Wang Lijun incident are dramatized with acknowledged fictionalization and renamed characters, but this is recent history, not ideological reinterpretation.

The lecture energy is the film's dominant mode. Narrators explain money and credit. The fourth wall breaks repeatedly. Streep closes with a direct address on campaign finance reform. Soderbergh wants to inoculate viewers against obliviousness, and the effort is unmistakable. It is also heavy-handed. The mixed critical reception makes sense. A film can be furious about injustice and still mistake a subpoena for a screenplay. The brownface controversy and the defamation suit from Mossack and Fonseca add extra noise. The Laundromat is based on true events and adapted from a book, which gives its anger a factual spine. It remains a blunt instrument, useful for instruction, less so for drama.

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