Scott Z. Burns has been a busy man, with the release of both The Report and The Laundromat on streaming services in 2019. The former I found to be one of my favorite movies of last year, and while the latter didn't, it is still a worthy and worthwhile flick. It can be as occasionally difficult to follow -- or swallow -- but it still shows Burns doing his uniquely brilliant work: making a movie out of a situation that is surely unfilmable, or at least uncinematic by definition. He's done this before, but this time, he turns his piercing eye and dry wit toward corporate malfeasance in the financial world, using the release of the Panama Papers as his thematic crucible. Here, he pairs again with Steven Soderbergh in a film that appears to be a cutesy "DIY money laundering" special until you realize the bad guys are having the last laugh, and the film transforms into an angry, anti-capitalist call for action.
We begin with Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas in character as Mossack and Fonseca, respectively, the lawyers and founders of the legal firm named after them. If you're like me and knew nothing about this firm, don't worry: it's pretty obvious these are the Bad Guys and that they're up to no good. At least, not for anyone but themselves. These are those one-percenters who develop impossibly complex financial systems to help billionaires stay rich and avoid paying taxes to their governments. Their posh, egotistical delivery is pointedly nihilistic, which makes you as skeptical as interested. We get the feeling that, although they are attempting to skirt the laws, these are the wealthy for whom loopholes allow them to make (and break) their own rules. Don't ask me specifics, though; as much as this movie tries to make these difficult topics accessible, I found myself bewildered by the halfway point.
It's not unlike Adam McKay's approach to the housing crisis in The Big Short, making a jargon-heavy and nuanced profession somewhat understandable and thoroughly entertaining, even if it's all moving a little too quickly for someone like me to understand. I probably should have taken a business or finance class in college, but here we are and I hate numbers. Thankfully, Burns has his characters break the fourth wall a lot to tell us more or less what's happening, and Soderbergh heightens the superficiality of these scenes to make it all a sort of meta-commentary on how we consume difficult information we really don't understand. That is, if it's in shiny packaging, delivered by classy A-listers, and makes us chuckle a bit, we'll swallow it, hook, line, and sinker. Oldman and Banderas are walking though theatrical sets in tuxes drinking martinis as they dryly "teach" us about finances. It's a filmmaking tactic that, in this case, puts us squarely in the position of its characters -- specifically, the ones who have no idea what's happening to them.
Speaking of which: Mossack and Fonseca narrate three stories about some of the people affected by the corrupt practices of their own firm. The first concerns Ellen Martin (Meryl Streep), whose husband (James Cromwell) dies in an accident. When she tries to get compensation from the boating company, she embarks on a journey through insane legalese to a reinsurance group, a remote trust, and a shell company based on a tiny Caribbean island. Before she is able to properly confront the trust manager (Jeffrey Wright), he is arrested by the IRS. The second story is of young Simone, whose father (Nonso Anozie) bribes her with $20 million in shares in an investment company to keep quiet about his affair with her best friend; when she goes to claim the money, it is revealed they are worthless shares in a shell company. The third story concerns the murder of Maywood (Matthias Schoenaerts) -- apparently based on a real person -- who demanded money from a rich Chinese client to continue laundering money through an offshore account and shell company.
Fascinating as the frame narration is -- and, really, it's a genius piece of work in itself -- it's not my favorite part of the film. I found the various stories more engaging, and for a brief time I wondered if this would become an ensemble drama like Crash with interconnected moments. Thankfully, it does not, but the film tends to have trouble straddling its focal points while balancing a unique dark humor. My favorite parts include Streep doing what she does best at this age: playing an innocent and furious woman, someone righteously crusading against a monstrous injustice she will never be able to comprehend, much less defeat. She is an everywoman, until she's not, and the film shows her doing her frighteningly acute character actor business as well. Really, I think it's amazing she has never worked with Soderbergh or Burns before, because they all can perform this uncanny balance of dramatic styles so well. But this is not a subtle movie, and some of the messages are as loud and crass as the filmmakers could deliver them; they call out the sins of the wealthy as well as the country in which greed is in fact (and law) enshrined as a virtue.
The Burns and Soderbergh team here crafts what may be the quirkiest, most stylistically camp outing from either, and it works brilliantly. I think. I couldn't quite shake the feeling that I was always a few steps behind the narration, and miles behind conceptually grasping the realities of money laundering and financial corruption rampant in our country and around the world. The film's ending, easily the best scene, is a galvanizing cry for finance reform: the brief imprisonments of Mossack and Fonseca are darkly farcical, and then Meryl Streep takes the stage in a magnificent relay through the multiple characters she has played in this movie, reciting the Panama Paper whistleblower's "John Doe" manifesto, ending in character as herself, the actress, but posing as Lady Liberty. It's a chilling and brilliant move from actress, writer, cinematographer, and director. It's just too bad I still didn't really know what anybody was talking about in this movie.
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