THE LAUNDROMAT (PG)
★★★★★
DIRECTOR Steven Soderbergh is in a playful mood with this Netflix cinema release as he lays bare the 2015 Panama Papers scandal, which he turns into a smart, brisk, gleefully inventive and black comic drama.
He skilfully illustrates the human cost of the industrialscale corruption, tax evasion and money laundering that was revealed when a hacker published millions of secret documents belonging to a Panamanian law firm.
Meryl Streep is full of surprises as a grieving granny on a search for a crumb of responsibility or accountability after her insurance company weasels on a payout. Meanwhile, Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas are a wonderfully theatrical double act as self-justifying lawyers, washing their hands of the global criminality of the wealthy and powerful.
As Streep makes clear in an impassioned plea for the freedom of information, the meek will not be inheriting the Earth – or much else – any time soon. to impress, the dialogue often resembles a deathless list of composes, artists and authors, and is full of trite observations about art, memory and identity.
Adapted from a novel by Donna Tartt, it uses the always impressive cinematography of Brit Roger Deakins as a fig leaf to hide the soap-opera plotting full of coincidence, betrayal and abandonment.
It’s made all the more disappointing by the fact it stars Nicole Kidman and is directed by John Crowley, who made Brooklyn, one of my favourite films of 2015.