The film opens with Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca introducing themselves and the concept and system of money laundering. For the rest of the film, Mossack and Fonseca act as narrators for three stories of people around the world who are affected by the company they run, Mossack Fonseca. Ellen Martin and her husband Joe are on a pleasure boat at Lake George, New York, when it capsizes, drowning Joe. When Ellen tries to get compensation from the boating company for Joe's death, she cannot because the reinsurance company that the boat company's owner and son Matthew bought their policy from was sold to another company based out of Nevis. The Nevis-based company is actually a trust of one of Mossack's shell companies and is under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service for fraud. After her attempts to contact Mossack and the Nevis-based company are unsuccessful, Ellen travels to Nevis to confront Malchus Boncamper, the manager of the trust. Malchus tricks Ellen and escapes to Miami only to be caught and arrested by IRS-CI Special Agents at Miami airport. The second story is about Simone, who is the daughter of Charles, an African billionaire. When Simone discovers her best friend is having an affair with Charles, he offers her shares in one of his investment companies to keep her silence. She accepts his offer, but when she travels to Mossack's offices in Panama City to claim the shares, they turn out to be worthless because they are actually part of a shell company under Mossack that only exists on paper. The third story is a dramatization of the death of Neil Heywood, part of the Wang Lijun incident. Heywood, an intermediary for wealthy Chinese looking to funnel money abroad, visits a Chongqing hotel to meet Gu Kailai. Maywood demands and pressures Gu for a much higher price if she wants him to continue laundering money for her family through a shell company Mossack owns. Gu responds by poisoning Maywood's drinks. Gu discloses the incident and reports Maywood to Chongqing police chiefWang Lijun who secretly records the conversation; he then reports her. The story ends with the arrest of Gu and her husband Bo Xilai for Maywood's murder and for corruption. The film ends with the leaking of the Panama Papers and subsequent police raids on Mossack Fonseca, the brief imprisonment of Mossack and Fonseca, and the shutdown of the firm. Mossack and Fonseca, along with Meryl Streep as herself, remind viewers that many such companies still exist, and the practice of money laundering and corruption using fake trusts and shell companies based in tax havens is still widespread. The film ends with Streep making a statement about the immediate need for campaign finance reforms in the USA.
In July 2016, it was announced that Steven Soderbergh was set to produce a then-untitled Panama Papers project. Later, in April 2018, it was announced that Soderbergh would also direct the film, now titled The Laundromat. Scott Z. Burns wrote the screenplay and production was set to commence in the fall of 2018. In May 2018, it was reported that Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas were in talks to star in the film with Netflix interested in acquiring the distribution rights. Soderbergh affirmed Netflix would likely be the film's distributor in July. In October, Netflix was confirmed to be releasing the movie, with David Schwimmer and Will Forte added to the cast. That same month, Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Parnell, James Cromwell, Melissa Rauch, Larry Wilmore and Robert Patrick joined the cast.
Filming
began on October 15, 2018.
Release
It had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 1, 2019. It also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and the San Sebastián International Film Festival in September 2019. It was released theatrically on September 27, 2019, before being released for digital streaming on October 18, 2019, by Netflix.
Reception
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval of 41% based on 151 reviews, with an average rating of 5.53/10. The site's critical consensus says, "The Laundromat misuses its incredible cast by taking a disappointingly blunt and unfocused approach to dramatizing the real-life events that inspired it." Based on 35 critics on Metacritic, the film's weighted average score is 57 out of 100, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Controversy
On October 16, 2019, weeks after its limited theatrical release and just two days before its scheduled wide streaming release, the two men at the center of the film, Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca, sued Netflix in an attempt to block the film's release. They argued the film defamed them. Netflix responded the next day calling the suit "laughable," and argued the film was "constitutionally protected speech." A Connecticut judge denied the injunction and moved the case to California, allowing the film to be released as planned. The Panamanian government also expressed strong objections to the film's release. Panama's vice president José Gabriel Carrizo pledged that Panama would do everything in its power to "fix" the country's image worldwide.
