Search icon

Entertainment

28th Aug 2019

WATCH: Meryl Streep takes on financial scammers in Netflix’s new movie The Laundromat

Keeley Ryan

Meryl Streep is taking on financial scammers in the first trailer for Netflix’s The Laundromat. 

The film stars the Oscar winner as Elle Martin who, when her picture-perfect vacation takes an unimaginable turn, begins investigating a fake insurance policy – only to find herself down a rabbit hole of questionable dealings that can be linked to a Panama City law firm and its vested interest in helping the world’s wealthiest citizens amass even larger fortunes.

The charming — and very well-dressed — founding partners Jürgen Mossack (Academy Award winner Gary Oldman) and Ramón Fonseca (Golden Globe nominee Antonio Banderas) are experts in the seductive ways shell companies and offshore accounts help the rich and powerful prosper.

They are about to show us that Ellen’s predicament only hints at the tax evasion, bribery and other illicit absurdities that the super wealthy indulge in to support the world’s corrupt financial system.

Zipping through a kaleidoscope of comic detours in China, Mexico, Africa (via Los Angeles) and the Caribbean en route to 2016’s Panama Papers publication — where journalists revealed the secret, leaked documents of Mossack Fonseca’s high-profile patrons — The Laundromat is directed by Academy Award winner Steven Soderbergh with a screenplay by Scott Z. Burns.

It is adapted from Secrecy World by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Jake Bernstein.

Jeffrey Wright, Melissa Rauch, Jeff Michalski, Jane Morris, Robert Patrick, David Schwimmer, Cristela Alonzo, Larry Clarke,  andWill Forte also star.

The rest of the cast includes Chris Parnell, Nonso Anozie, Larry Wilmore, Jessica Allain, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Matthias Schoenaerts, Rosalind Chao, Kunjue Li, Ming Lo, with James Cromwell and Sharon Stone.

The Laundromat is out on Netflix on October 18. But in the meantime, you can check out the trailer below.