A low point for Soderbergh...

Full Review | Original Score: C | May 10, 2024

This unlikely (and extremely well-dressed) duo is at the centre of The Laundromat, and it is part of what makes the film so compelling [...]: when Mossack and Fonseca look into the camera and invite us into their world, it’s hard to resist their charm.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 13, 2023

The Laundromat attempts to give an understanding of how the rich benefit from tax avoidance, offshore companies, and so forth. As well as how much the rich will do to keep those benefits.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 21, 2023

It's like Where's Waldo sporting all the other [famous] people in this film... it's all fun, it works.

Full Review | Oct 22, 2022

It may sound like a confusing mess and to be honest it kind of is. But you could say that’s the point. It’s a mirror image of the tangled, corrupt maze of shady unregulated money management.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 23, 2022

If it misses just as often as it hits, at least it’s taking some big swings.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | May 13, 2022

The film's soft news approach, meant to evoke indignation, fails to take hold or make the viewer incensed by the injustice of it all.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 23, 2022

This is Soderbergh in Ocean's Eleven mode, and although he also unashamedly reaches for comparisons with The Big Short he falls, erm, short with this flashily dressed money-centric cautionary tale...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 14, 2021

Steven Soderbergh discards his generally non-committal stance in The Laundromat, offering a fairly withering critique of global corporate tax evasion and the financial elite.

Full Review | Feb 10, 2021

It clearly plays off of the style of movies like The Big Short (2015), but unfortunately is nowhere near its clarity, thoroughness, or artistry.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 2, 2021

Features lively performances - I'm looking at you Oldman and Banderas - timely commentary about whistleblowers and fraud and a rousing fourth wall breaking ending and yet, feels like less than the sum of its parts.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 31, 2021

It's all kinds of unnecessarily weird and tasteless and exploitative and way, way, way too blunt and shrill.

Full Review | Oct 19, 2020

It's different and may work for some, but ultimately The Laundromat drops the ball as a piece of cinema that strives to make a complicated situation feel tangible, devastating and perhaps most importantly, human.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 28, 2020

Moments that hold hypothetical resonance...are instead played with smug, back-slapping broadness.

Full Review | Jul 29, 2020

It's entertaining at a few points, but you know what else can be entertaining? A 'we live in a society'-type op-ed. The Laundromat could have just worked as that.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 28, 2020

My problem with this film is not in any way linked to the political text that, I admit, is very fair in portraying the journalistic chronicle of a legal farce, but rather due to the lack of verve. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jun 27, 2020

Its bleakness and blunt approach to the facts of tax havens and money laundering caused this film to largely disappear from awards radars, but compelling performances from Meryl Streep and Jeffrey Wright will at least help viewers.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 22, 2020

Soderbergh's sleekness is probably not the right match for what should have been a much more angry and painful film.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 11, 2020

A quick, entertaining, and quite educational experience. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 7, 2020

Perhaps a lesser known cast, or a more focussed, personalised story might resonate, but in this glamourous, knotty form the players involved feel more distant than ever.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Feb 6, 2020