nes_group3_reviewer Review of The Laundromat

The Laundromat (I) (2019)

Great cast, bad guys are too charismatic

[7/10 · 17 September 2020]

I have been planning to watch "The Laundromat" since spring when Netflix first recommended it to me. Thanks to my English homework I watched it yesterday! What I loved most about this movie? Definitely Meryl Streep's part. She is fascinating even being awfully dressed (I hope intentionally, compared to "The Devil Wears Prada"). Actually I enjoyed the all-star cast. Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas looked charming and wonderful despite their unscrupulous manoeuvres. David Schwimmer and Melissa Rauch left an impression of an ostensible crazy crossover. (Yes, I am the person who knows them only due to "Friends" and "The Big Bang Theory" and these associations are very strong.) The second thing which impressed me (after all the famous actors involved in one movie) was visualization. Cameramen and designers' work was a great success. The majority of images were thoughtfully constructed and sufficient amount of attention to detail was paid. Every scenery (even those which looked more like artificial stage backgrounds) persuasively reflected the characters' emotions, take for instance the beach scene where relaxed Mossack tells us his life story sitting on a bench with a white-blue tent and some sophisticated elements or the final one where Meryl Streep turns from the employee from Mossack Fonseca into the main character and then into herself resembling the Statue of Liberty with a hairbrush instead of a torch. Speaking about the purpose of the movie I have to say that I was a bit disappointed. Definitely it was not a documentary but even as a feature film it had an avenue for being more informative and specific. It didn't provide us an insight into the process of revealing sensitive information. The whistleblower wasn't shown neither as a confident and brave person nor as a person trying to shy away from the necessity to expose wrongdoing. (Actually the whistleblower was not shown explicitly and the viewer can only make assumptions.) The main character wanted to sound the alarm but the whole story didn't seem to support her endeavour. Negative characters were romanticized: Mossack and Fonseca were being too charismatic. The numerous stories about dark sizes of Mossack Fonseca's clients overrode the idea of global unfairness and injustice provided both by legislation and those companies similar to Mossack Fonseca.