The Laundromat, based on the book by Jake Bernstein - Nine out of 10

The Laundromat, based on the book by Jake Bernstein

Nine out of 10

This comedy drama – listed only as drama for some obscure reason, contrary to the tone, the shades adopted by Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas right from the opening scenes, surely with the director, the brilliant Steven Soderbegh determined to expose the financial scandal, but also reveal the preposterous, grotesque dimensions of the money market arrangements, which are still in place in so many states and territories (such as Delaware, where we are told that the director has registered five companies and the writer one) – would be touching a raw nerve in so many countries, where corruption is rampant and rulers, dictators and Trump like clowns park their money outside threatening jurisdictions.

In our land, the former gangster ruler has been jailed a few months ago, but only after he had plundered, abused the system, finances, judicial norms and may have sent money to Nevis, a fiscal paradise at the center of the plot of The Laundromat, where so many companies and shady thugs have established shell aka empty concoctions where registered, without any activity, employees or sense, other than to protect the ‘privacy’ of the owners, that used these unscrupulous territories and tiny states – albeit Nevada, Delaware, Jersey, Luxembourg are not in the Caribbean and the Irish lax tax norms have encouraged Apple, among others, to use the country in order to pay minimal dues, if anything of what should be given to tax authorities in more demanding venues – to Launder money…hence the title of this film.

To begin with, Gary Oldman aka Jürgen Mossack and Antonio Banderas aka Ramon Fonseca, explain with alacrity – and perhaps with too much enthusiasm for the rocambolesque, extravagant side of those dubious, ultimately vicious in fact personages – the significance of money, how we used to trade bananas for cows and they have some props in the form of primitive humans to exemplify the idea, and what the disadvantages were, in that bananas would ripe and then get spoiled and the cows…well, they could run away.

Therefore the need for something more solid, unperishable, to be traded with better effect, more diligently, and we arrive in this day and age, to the scandal known as The Panama Papers, following which the prime minister of Iceland, reputedly a Nordic, clean country – as a side note, the famous Danish have a bank, Danske, involved in a huge operation that looks pretty much like the plot of this film –has resigned, together with other world and business leaders and which we follow with great interest, especially from the moment when the glorious Meryl Streep enters the frame, as Ellen Martin, the woman who becomes a widow when the vacation she is on takes a turn for the horrid and the insurance company that should have provided adequate reparations proves to be involved in a massive fraud.

As the retired woman follows the money, she comes across Malchus Irvin Boncamper aka Jeffrey Wright, in the unlikely setting of Nevis, where she is looking for the address of this re-insurance company, which is actually hiding one of the many frauds masquerading as legitimate businesses, for which this bigamous man serves as cover, between his games of solitaire, and she happens to ask exactly the right person, only Malchus declines to admit he is the one to answer questions and pretends to be unacquainted with Boncamper, only to be arrested in Miami, in front of his second wife, who wants to kick him as soon as she finds out he has another spouse, in Nevis.

The segment involving Charles, Astrid, Simone and Miranda feels like a small disappointment in what is otherwise a wonderful entertainment, because it is much more soap opera – granted, this was a real scandal, but it plays like one of the South American telenovelas that were so popular in our parts and elsewhere – notwithstanding the fact that it does expose the abhorrence of those transactions, how even within a family, one member could cheat the others out of promised riches, in this particular case, companies worth in excess of $ 20 million, which are emptied and then valued at only 34 or 100 dollars.

The China chapter makes for some gruesome viewing, no jocularity here, as it should be for we are talking about a vicious tyranny, and the personage Bo Xilai is as real as can be, seen as a potential competitor for the present dictator, in charge for life (!), and thus eliminated for what was surely serious, flaunting, ghastly corruption, but persecuted more as a political symbol- do not rise against the emperor, because the result will be devastating for the family and all those near, we see how they take organs – heart, kidneys, cornea – and not from a corpse, but from…a living human being!

Free Hong Kong would be the message, but also pay attention there, for if these bastards catch you, there is no limit to what they would do to you.

When Ellen Martin first approaches a media outlet with the information she has gathered, the story of over twenty fatalities on a vacation boat, on a lake, not the high seas, and the fraud that underlines the insurance and re-insurance of the companies involved, they are not overexcited, on the contrary, it seems to them as such an exotic, complicated narrative, with little or no impact locally – the journalist even says that this looks like a foreign based shindig…she did not use the last word though) and when they reach the location…Panama, the already diminishing interest appears to vanish.

Nonetheless, the big scandal eventually hits the news and it makes the headlines worldwide, provoking aforementioned resignations and disgrace, and the couple of extremely wealthy comics, Mossack and Fonseca – both in possession of some resplendent, best houses in the world type – panic and see that they have to close down many of the multitude of offices they had all over the world, following the hacking of their system and the publication of the incredible list of clients, some of them still enjoying ill gained riches to this day…