 You know, movies to learn from, okay? This is Think Tech Hawaii, I'm Jay Fidel. Today we're going to talk about the Laundromat movie. Netflix is a very interesting movie. And George and I have looked at it. We have a lot to say about this movie. After all, the movies we see should be the movies we learn from. I think that's the, you know, the center of the channel for us. And this is definitely a movie with Meryl Streepin, Antonio Banderas and my favorite Gary Ollman and others that tries to tell us what's going on in the money laundering business. It's after a book and there are three elements to it and the three elements are all after the book and thus at least in part they're true. They're romanticized, they're dramatized, but they come off through stories. So George, you know, how did you see this in our quest for movies to learn from? This movie is based on the Panama paper, which is in 2016, it was revealed that these attorneys in Panama, Mossack and Sanseca, they were setting up all these shell corporations, right? And bottom line is this is based on a true story. I mean, the directors and producers have sort of played with the facts a little bit, but the basis of this is true. Mossack, Sanseca, these two lawyers in Panama were setting up where basically he's covering up for money laundering. And that's why this is called the laundromat because it's, that's what it basically is, you know, money laundering. This is an interesting story because it shows how the very wealthy are able to get away from paying taxes by setting up these shell corporations. There were three stories. They're not related except for the fact that they cover situations that are affected by global money laundering, including laundering that was taking place through these guys in Panama. And we have to connect them ourselves. And in some ways, the director makes them funny, but it's not really funny if you think about it. These are situations where people have been profoundly damaged by the whole money laundering process. And when you look at it in the larger sense, all the three stories, what you see is a hole in the boat. You know, how can we have economies all over the world and people working at jobs and, you know, in trying to be efficient in an economy setting when these guys are, you know, pulling it out from the bottom of the boat? That's what's happening. And what we don't realize that movie helps us and the three stories help us is that the amount of money is fantastic. It's fantastic. It's in the billions and collectively in the trillions. And so we have a window on this. Let me add one more thought, George, if you don't mind, in various places around the world, these island communities that had no regulation. And the trick was to say no, you know, this is not really what the internal revenue service was. The trick was to avoid these schemes, but they were out there and they were pretty active back in, you know, in the 80s, maybe later. And they're probably active today. And this is a little window on not only the Panama Papers and Panama, but a number, and I mentioned in the movie, there are these, you know, these islands you never heard of, which all they have is the, you know, a legal framework to establish these empty, you know, terminable trusts. And that's where this money goes from left to right and into the pockets of the scammers. And this movie is all about people scamming. So with that in mind, can you tell us the three plots that are involved? Actually, it's four plots because there's a wraparound plot involving the Ethan Allen. And what's remarkable is that the show just before this today involved Ethan Allen, a descendant of Ethan Allen of the New England fame, a revolutionary hero. And the boat, where this all starts, the movie all starts, the boat that capsizes, it's called the Ethan Allen. How about that for a coincidence? So it is actually four plots. It's the one that wraps around everything and tells you about Meryl Streep's adventures. And there's the three stories of scamming. The main one is Ellen Martin is played by Meryl Streep. And Cammy O'Rowe, her husband, James Cromwell plays that. And they're on a boat on a lake, they're on a vacation. And the boat captain doesn't see something coming and at the last minute sees something coming to hit him. So he makes a quick move and the boat, which is open, it's an open boat. It sort of goes on its side and all these people fall into the water. And I think 16 people died out of the 40 on the boat, including her husband, played by James Cromwell. Then she's sat in by her husband's desk, right? And she goes to her attorney because they're gonna collect from the boat captain negligence, whatever. So then they show the one of the owners of the boat, the two owners in a restaurant, they're sitting and they have a restaurant too. And they realize that this insurance policy is bogus because they had an insurance policy that was sold to another sale corporation. And when you have that, then it's no longer valid. So the insurance is not valid. So she's up the creek, she's getting, I mean, I think the boat owner gives her a little bit of something, you know, that they're able to find a little few dollars for her, but nothing like what she should be getting, right? For the death of her husband, right? The first plot is about how she goes down there. Do you remember? She travels down there to Panama. She travels to the island and then she sees this guy in the street and she asks him about this guy with a certain name. And it's actually the guy, I think Nemez is a Bahamas, right? And he plays like he doesn't know who he is, right? And he just walks away, but she's looking for him. And she goes to the boat. He lied to her. He lied, he denied it. He was, she thought he was there. He lied to her like he doesn't know who this is, but it's him, right? So then, you know, she wants to find out what's going on and whatever. And little by little, she starts putting pieces together, you know, who and then leads herself to these two attorneys, Mosach, Fonseca, which are real from the Panama Papers, right? And I won't talk about the rest because that's giving away the... Okay, in that first segment, so to speak, she leaves empty-handed and returns to Miami in the airport there. And in the airport, there's the same guy who denied that he was who he thought he was the manager of the company. And the law firm were one of the related companies. And it's really interesting and the FBI is there. So it's Meryl Streep, this guy, this creep. And I think his daughter was there too, right? In the airport meeting him and then it was the FBI. And they arrested him and she's off a few feet away, smiling and she knows now that somebody knows that he's a scammer and you don't know you're left. I was left, maybe you had a different impression. I was left with the notion that Meryl Streep's character actually reported this guy to the FBI and that's why they caught him, but you don't know for sure. Because she had his name and she went to the office so she knew something was both right. I think you got it on the ball that she maybe alerted the FBI. She was smiling, she didn't say anything, she said they're smiling and all that. There's something more here than just a passerby and by the way, that was the FBI. You know, all these years we have loved the FBI and we still love the FBI, by the way. And they came off pretty well in this movie. They came off in this movie looking good, which is good compared to the CIA in the last movie we reviewed where they look at CIA and they look at the FBI and look really good. So yes, I was gonna get an FBI. So she's a pretty smart cookie. There's more to this and I'll get into that. But I'll talk about the second one. The African guy. Oh yeah, I know. He's got this thing right here. Extraordinary mansion, the mansion. Exactly. And he was like out of this world. He had so much money around him, you couldn't believe it. Beautiful mansion. Yeah. And he's got his lovely young daughter. She's very pretty, she's a teenager. I mean, a college student and his elegant black, black wife, right? She's gorgeous. She's like a Jackie Kennedy kind of wife, you know? And they've got this estate. It's like something out of Beverly Hills, you know, the hills and the hills. Gorgeous estate. And he's stripping his daughter's college roommate. Come on, you know? I mean, she's not a beauty, you know? Not to my taste, you know? The daughter goes to the pool in the backyard, the way in the back and sees as her father kissing her room, her college roommate, but she knows something's up. So then he's always upset and he knows that his daughter saw this. So he's begging her not to say anything to the mother to create chaos in their house, right, in their family. It was a trust. He offered her a trust that somehow owned the business and the business was worth 20 million dollars. Supposedly. When she met with the, who was handling the trust, I think it was Mosec Bonseca. The trust was worth nothing. So I mean, all these shell corporations, the shell trust, all a bunch of business, right? And then she finds out that there had been previous assignations and he bought off his fancy wife, too, and gave her a similar trust. Also, he said, worth 20 million dollars. And she had zero as well. So he used these scam trusts to pay people off and let them think it was worth 20 plus 20 or 40 million dollars and it wasn't worth anything. And that was the second story, how you can pass this around and fake people out and scam them for huge amounts of money while he himself was a principal in all this scamming and money laundering was living in this fabulous house. Can I go into the Chinese government? Yeah, that's actually the one that people know about. Basically, the Chinese government, the wife of the high official, right? Both she lie. It was a very famous corruption case. She's another knockout about the beautiful Asian woman. I mean, that's an elegant, like the black wife of the other guy, really classy, classy woman, right? But she's really sly, you know? And of course, communist government. So basically, there's this agent that works for them, this English guy, and he goes to the house where the wife and the daughter are there. The wife is uncomfortable that he may reveal something, right? Or that his wife, I mean, the wife of the agent by reveal something. But she asked him to divorce his wife. And he said, I can't divorce my wife, right? So she decides that he's gotta be eliminated. So her daughter, young daughter, teenage daughter, they give her a drink of water and it's with Sai and I, and they kill him. He just goes and he dies, right? And then eventually the Chinese authorities find out what's going on with this guy. She tells either both she lie or she tells the police. I don't remember that she had to do this to avoid a scandal. And I think it was the police recorded the conversation and turned it over to the government. And then the government took her down. It was really ridiculous. The government took her down. This is a true story, right? This is what happened to the wife of Boschi Lai who killed somebody and Boschi Lai was also involved in the corruption, maybe covering it up, I don't know. And the two of them went down. Chinese government, right? Yeah. So that was the other, the third. It was all about corruption. And the Chinese government, arguably Xi Jinping was trying to stop all this corruption. And this was one where they had the evidence that the corruption was in fact a murder of a fellow who was gonna turn her in. And that was enough to ruin the family. I mean, destroy the family. So just another example, don't you think of corruption by virtue of these international scam, money laundering, trust, that was the most interesting because you know, we've heard about that one before. And probably the other two are also rooted in truth. If they're not actual documentaries, they're romanticized or dramatic documentaries. But I think they're all real cases. Yeah, this is ubiquitous. It's all around the world. It's getting, they're very rich, protecting their assets and the little guy gets screwed. Like Ellen Martin, the middle street character gets screwed. Yeah. So this is how it progresses. And then there's a surprise ending. Do you want me to discuss the surprise ending? Yeah, sure. Okay. Well, this Wiley Ellen Martin played by Meryl Streep. She decides to disguise herself as a Hispanic receptionist or clerk, right? And she's able to be hired at the firm of Mosec Fonseca, right? Who are these two Panama Pana paper lawyers, right? Because the earlier woman who was doing this, I kinda remembered that she resigned or I forgot exactly from the movie. So there was a vacancy. And she played the role pretty good and she got the job and then she was an insider. She disguised herself with padding and a wig and all kinds of stuff. And then she got all the inside dope, right? She knows what's going on, right? And then she passed this information on to the authorities, right? Well, to the newspaper, wasn't it? That was a reporter. Sharon Stone was the reporter. Yeah, that's right. And now it's public and they dropped it on the FBI again. And before you know it, there's a trial. And these two guys, the two partners, they were convicted, but after three months, they were let go because they, some kind of loophole or whatever, you know? So they got off real easy, right, easy. But at the end, they show Ellen Martin, which is taking off her wig, taking off the padding. And then she, you know, she won. She got even, she got her revenge in the end. So she goes and she plays Martin in terms of putting the, you know, the disguise on and she brings them down. And that's part of the movie. But then at the end, she expresses her own self, she expresses her view of this whole affair and the fact that it's happening globally and involves huge amounts of money and buying influence everywhere and so forth. And it does suggest that the three months sentences those guys got, you know, were really low, considering the amount of money they stole from people. But it also, you know, implies, and by the way, they were not happy, these two guys, they were not happy with this movie. She expresses her view and the fact that they got away with it and the fact that nobody's doing much about it. And it's global, though you don't have a global effort to try to stop them and they're stealing a lot of money. And so who was your favorite actor or actress in the movie, George? Because I have a specific view of this. You know, I really like Meryl Streep. I mean, I've always liked her. She's an unbelievably good actress. Gary Oldman, too, you know, that he played, his German accent was a little put on, you know, it's sort of hard to believe, but I would say Meryl Streep. I mean, she played this role through a T. She's always really, she's an actress par excellence, you know, she's no craving beauty, but she knows that she plays these roles wonderfully. So I'll say Meryl Streep, that's a good name at the point. Okay, and Antonio Banderas was the name you were looking for. Oh, yeah, right. He played Gary Oldman's partner. And I thought that he was slightly weak in this movie. Maybe it was supposed to be that way. And he didn't look as robust on the screen as he has in the past, you know, he's been a real leading man in the past. I wouldn't say he looked like a leading man in this one. Gary Oldman was my favorite. I mean, I like Meryl Streep, no doubt. She's had a tremendous career, but so is Gary Oldman. He's English, you know, he's an English actor. He has been in dozens and dozens of films. And he's one of the top box office roles in all of Hollywood. And he's so flexible. I first saw him in a movie called The Professional. And I said, this is a guy. It was about, he played the role of a corrupted cop, but it was so terrific. And this movie was really memorable. I've seen it more than once, which is something for me. And I believe that in this movie, he largely carried the movie. He carried the evilness, you know, of the money laundress. And he made these really rye and cynical statements about how you do this. He was the chief provocateur. He was the guy who set things up. He was the guy who was completely amoral about it. And I like this German accent actually, George. Let's see, wait a minute. Who is this? What actor is doing this? And sure enough, Gary Oldman. And Antonio Gander, a character of Fonseca, he talked about he was originally trying to be pro bono, help the poor, but then he realized that, you know, there's no end to this. So he decided to become a scammer with Oldman's character. I looked at one review of this movie by a guy online called Burke, I forget his first name. And Burke didn't particularly like the movie. And I want to tell you a little about what he said before I ask you what you thought, how you rated it. And Burke thought that, you know, that the direction, which was by a very famous director. But in this case, the way he handled the transition from reality to drama, even, you know, comedy. There was comedy in this movie. There were very humorous things that happened. I really suggest that he, a lack of focus on his part. And Burke said that he would really have preferred if the movie had been all serious, or more serious than it came out to be. I didn't see that. I think there's always room to make fun. And he also said that the three stories were too much, or actually four stories, and that it would have been a better movie had there been fewer stories. There was more attention to the reality of what happened and the connection. On the other hand, in contradistinction to that, I felt that each of the moves that you had to work, you had to work, George, on finding the common denominator. You had to figure out, you know, what was happening there in the airport. You had, you know, with the money manager, you had to figure out what was going on in that island where she visited. You had to figure out what the connection was with that African guy with the mansion and the daughters and what that all meant and how that connects with the first story. And of course, the Boshi Lai incident, her name was Goo, Mrs. G. U. Goo. That was really interesting, but it was different. And it was hard to find a common denominator among all the three. So all I'm saying is you have to work on this movie. And if you're using this movie as a statement and educational experience for the viewer to learn about how money is laundered, sorry, but it didn't get there. It didn't get there. And so I don't necessarily agree with the way Burke put his critique, but I think it could have been better in terms of showing us exactly how they moved the money around. So what is your rating on this movie, George? Well, I'm gonna give it a nine because I agree with this Burke in some ways. There's a little bit of fishy silliness in this movie. And I think it's a really serious subject. And then they did comedy and that most I can find out that the two attorneys, how they put this sort of silly, they depicted very silly. You look at it with a TV and you'll see that the real guys were much more serious than the real people. You know, these two on the movie, they sort of make them sort of cute, and they give away the personality. That bothers me, because they're really evil. These attorneys are real evil people. Yeah, you take a perfectly serious subject. Remember, don't look up. We review, don't look up. That's really deadly serious. And they were trying to put a cheery aspect on a comedic aspect to it. And at the end of the day, you say, hmm, you know, that was really serious. I should be thinking much deeper than the surface of this movie. And if they were trying to do that, I think they were trying to do that in Laundromat, but I don't think they got there. I think you saw the fluff of it, but you didn't see the serious problem that we have globally. So it doesn't, I would give it an 8.7, how about that? An 8.7, that's what I would give it. I'm sorry I can't give it a higher number. I love Meryl Streep and I love Gary Oldman, but I can't go higher than that. And there may be more movies coming out, you know, about the Trump administration, about climate change, about some of these efforts that have succeeded or failed, mostly failed, try to correct the problems of the world, and they're gonna be dealing with the same kind of combination of trying to make it popular, relatable to the viewership, but at the same time, educational, really profoundly educational. So we'll try to cover those, George. Thank you, George. Go see you next time. Keep watching. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. 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