The Laundromat

First Hit: Confusing in presentation and often meandering away from the point, this movie fails in presenting how shell companies work to launder money and how this wrongdoing is hidden from governments.

This film attempts to teach and engage the audience about the art of laundering money through a story of tragedy, charts and graphs, and humorous vignettes. It fails on all three fronts.

Jurgen Mossack (Gary Oldman) and Ramon Fonseca (Antonio Banderas) are two flamboyant law partners based in Panama City who run a set of bogus insurance and reinsurance companies. These insurance companies scam others by taking their money, hide it, change documentation, and then legally never payout against the claims. They also have set up schemes of shell companies where money is hidden and moved around so that taxes are never paid on the money.

The human life stories they use include Ellen and Joe Martin (Meryl Streep and James Cromwell, respectively) who are in retirement and decide to go on a lake tour boat. The boat capsizes because of a rogue wave, and Joe dies along with several others. Ellen, as one of the survivors, expects a class action financial settlement from the tour boat company’s insurance company.

However, Ellen’s lawyer (Larry Clarke) discovers that the insurance company used by the boat tour company had sold the policy to someone else and that the timing issue means the boat company wasn’t insured.

The film spends a little time with the boat owner, Captain Paris (Robert Patrick), as he discovers from his employee Matthew Quirk (David Schwimmer) that he’d gotten a deal on the insurance, and that’s why he selected this company. The payments were going to a shell company (postal box) on Nevis Island in the Caribbean that is run by Malchus Irvin Boncamper (Jeffrey Wright).

Ellen, who is mad as hell, traces the payment scheme and goes to Nevis, hoping to recover a settlement and discovers that the address is only a postal box.

The film stupidly adds in stuff about how Boncamper has two families, one on Nevis and one in Miami. And he gets caught in this charade while being arrested in Miami by the federal government.

The story also adds in other drama about a wealthy man, from Africa, living in the US having an affair with his daughter’s college friend. Getting caught by the daughter, he bribes her to not tell her mother by giving her a company that’s supposedly is worth $20M. Because of a previous indiscretion that his wife knew about, this man had also given his wife a company. Angry at the bribe and tired of his shenanigans, the wife and daughter head to Panama City to visit Mossack and Fonseca and cash in their stock.

Of course, they discover that their companies are fake shell organizations, and the stock is worth nothing because the husband has transferred all the funds to his own companies.

There are ill-timed and confusing graphics thrown into the mix, and there are additional maudlin scenes of Ellen with her daughter and grandchildren in Las Vegas where Ellen and Joe had met. The whole Las Vegas segue could have been left out as it added little to the story.

This film suffers significantly from the beginning moments with Mossack and Fonseca in contrived scenes with them talking to the camera and attempting to explain financial schemes in horrible accents that make it even more muddled.

Streep is wasted and horribly underused in this story. Oldman is horrible. I’ve no idea of what he was attempting to represent because one moment he’s sitting in a beach chair and the next he’s pretending to be a lawyer using a perverse accent. Banderas was slightly better than Oldman, but not much. Wright was okay as the elusive representative of a fake insurance company. Schwimmer was OK as the relative and employee of the tour boat company that had looked to save them money on insurance premiums. There are nearly forty other actors playing roles in this story, but because the story is confusingly contrived, no one character is developed. Scott Z. Burns wrote a disastrous screenplay. Steven directed this, and it would have been interesting to better understand what was in his head. I was thrown from one ill-conceived scene to another while being interrupted with graphic explanations with poorly articulated voiceovers.

Overall: I learned little to nothing about shell companies and tax avoidance because the stories thrown up on the screen were poorly conceived.

Lucky Logan

First Hit:  Funny at times but lacked intrigue and substance.

Director Steven Soderbergh had previously indicated he’d quit making films.  I guess it wasn't true. Here he made a film that could be compared with his other action crime films, Oceans 11 through 13, although dumbed down. You'd think think he had the formula down, but he must not have, this one didn't work.

Maybe the mistake was thinking that making the same kind of robbery/crime film with people that aren’t very bright would be interesting or compelling. Unfortunately, it wasn't as it because the storyline didn't translate out of Las Vegas at all. Although he tried to reduce the complexity of the crime and dumb things down because of the characters, it didn’t work because the actual details to pull off this crime and the reveal at the end, weren’t believable.

Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) is a doting and wonderful father to Sadie (Farrah Mckenzie). His former wife, Bobbie Jo Chapman (Katie Holmes), is antagonistic towards him but she does see his love for their daughter. He gets fired from his job, through no real fault of his own, because of a old football injury. He does appear to have some smarts about him.

His brother Clyde (Adam Driver) is slow and not very bright. He lost his arm in the Iraq war and has a prosthetic that is somewhat useless to him as a bartender in a local dive. Jimmy also has a sister Mellie (Riley Keogh) who runs a small town beauty salon and knows a hell of a lot about cars.

The location is significant because it is near the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The Logan clan needs money, so the brothers decide to rob the speedway. Hatching a plan, they decide they need to blow up a safe and decide to hire an incarcerated Joe Bang (Daniel Craig), who is an expert at blowing up safes. Upon hearing the plan, Joe tells Jimmy and Clyde that he'll need his slow hick brothers Fish (Jack Quaid) and Sam (Brian Gleeson) to help him. He wants them to get the explosives and to break the raceway’s computer payment system. The brothers quote was priceless: “I knows all about them twitters and such”, this gives the audience an idea of their ilk.

This team does come up with an ingenious plan to get Joe out of prison without the prison knowing, rob the raceway, and take the heat off them after the robbery. However, the ending leaves a question as to whether they will get away with it as Special Agent Sarah Grayson (Hilary Swank), who seems to be the smartest person in the film, bellies up to the bar in the end and starts talking with Clyde.

Tatum was good, but I didn’t buy his perceived dumbness nor his smartness, and maybe that was the point. Driver was OK as a slow dedicated brother. He almost came across at too dumb. Keogh was fantastic as the smart as a whip sister that knew how to control what she needed to control. Mckenzie was excellent as Tatum’s and Holmes’ daughter. She was very engaging to watch. Holmes was OK as mother and former wife. Craig was odd in this role. There was something that didn’t work for me as him being a hick. However, he did create an over the top character. Quaid and Gleeson were very good in their dumb brother roles and it appears they’ve picked up the acting chops of their parents. Rebecca Blunt wrote the screenplay. What didn’t work was not making the characters believable. Their actions and a lack of character depth created too many questions about the story. Soderbergh made some of the comedy work, but the weakness, for me, lay in the believability of the characters and congruency of their actions.

Overall:  This film is funny at times, but fails where it really needs to be strong, pulling plausibility out of characters and their actions.

Side Effects

First Hit:  An outstanding film; finely crafted with excellent performances.

I cannot say enough about this film because the drama setup and then to have it evolve into a complex crime thriller was fantastic.

I was fully drawn in by the story but it was the fine acting by Jude Law (as Dr. Jonathan Banks), Rooney Mara (as Emily Taylor) while being outstandingly supported by Catherine Zeta-Jones (as Dr. Victoria Siebert) and Channing Tatum (as Martin Taylor).

The film subtly draws you in to feel a deep sadness for Emily and Martin as they attempt to put their lives back together after he comes out of prison for insider trading. The descriptions of, and watching Emily experience her depression were extraordinary – I completely believed her.

What made this film work was the wonderful writing and the amazing direction by Steven Soderbergh. This film explores depression, the use of pharmaceuticals to treat depression, the law and how it works with double jeopardy and mental health, pharmaceutical companies, relationships, and greed encased in a whole and complete film.

Mara was unbelievably great and I bought the story hook line and sinker. Her performance in this film will set her apart from a small group of very good actresses into greatness. Law was outstanding. His strength as a man and openness as a human being were all exposed as he knew something was up and wasn’t going to stop trying to figure out what the real story was. Zeta-Jones in a secondary but critical/pivotal role was very very good. Tatum was physically only in the first part of the film but his presence set up the rest of the film and therefore he’s part of the whole film. Scott Z. Burns wrote a sublime script. It was interesting, full of twists but not for effect, they were there to move the story forward and drive to a very interesting end. Soderbergh directed this film with perfection - cannot say anything more - perfect.

Overall:  This is a really great film.

Magic Mike

First Hit:  The girls in the audience (both in the film and in my theater) really enjoyed these well sculpted males.

This story was somewhat unique in that male exotic dancers are rarely the subject of a film.

Mike (played by Channing Tatum) is “an entrepreneur”. He is a roofer, he does odd jobs, he’s a male exotic dancer, and his love is furniture making. He does everything well and he cares. As a dancer he is phenomenal. His moves are like “magic”.

He works in a club owned by Dallas (played by Matthew McConaughey). Dallas is in-charge and it is evident. He’s also great at making his dancers feel good about working in his club while he enriches himself. He’s got a dark side but it is rarely evident.

Adam (played by Alex Pettyfer) is a lazy lost young man who won’t wear a tie for a job, but really finds something wrong with every job he thinks about. He lives with his sister Brooke (played by Cody Horn) who has a steady job in medical insurance and is very protective of her younger brother. One day Mike takes Adam to Dallas’ club. He’s thrown on stage and lo-and-behold, he has found something he can do and he makes money – easy cash.

Brooke asks Mike to take care of her young brother although she disapproves of Adam and Mike’s chosen field of work. Mike has an occasional, on-call girlfriend named Joanna (played by Olivia Munn) who does three-ways with him, is a psychologist, and is very seductive. She appears in the film in an on-call basis until her truth becomes known to Mike.

The film isn’t about the dancing, which is some cases extraordinary, it is about growing up and living one’s truth.

Tatum is strong and wonderful in his portrayal of a man who really wants to find a different life, but shows enough internal roadblocks to make mistakes in judgment. McConaughey is perfect as the somewhat sleazy male dancer night club owner. Pettyfer is good as the lost young man but there isn’t enough understanding as to why he’s so dead set against doing various jobs (where was his pain?). Munn is very good as a woman who lives two lives and likes to play with Mike. Horn is a revelation. I really liked her look and feel as her character. She felt real in her role. Reid Carolin wrote a very strong script. Steven Soderbergh delivered yet another excellent film. The direction was clear, strong, and crisp – no wasted scenes.

Overall: This was a very entertaining film as the girls in the audience vocally reminded me.

Haywire

First Hit:  Although the story is not very strong, Gina Carano is good as a private intelligence action contractor.

I saw two action films with women as the lead characters this weekend and the primary difference is believability of their skills.

Mallory (played by Gina Carano) is a contractor for hire. She will provide protection, rescue hostages, or anything for a price. She’s a former Marine as was her hero father Mr. Kane (played by Bill Paxton).

The filmmakers made enough of this backstory making her skills and intensity believable.

The film begins with her sitting in a booth drinking a cup of tea. The intensity on her face tells the whole story, she’s in the middle of a story and we are slowly invited in. One thing I noticed was that there were no opening credits, which was nice.

The basic story is that she is set up to be eliminated along with a Chinese hostage she is supposed to rescue. However, Paul a British intelligence officer (played by Michael Fassbender) who is the guy that has to kill her soon realizes that this is going to be difficult. At every turn there are people after her and she takes care of business in a reasonable fashion.

Towards the end she’s offered a legitimate job with the US Government but she has a revenge streak in her and therefore until she finishes the people who tried to finish her, she isn’t taking the job.

Carano is fully capable of making this role hers and she does an outstanding job of having me believe she was capable of all her moves. Fassbender was good as the British MI agent. Antonio Banderas, as Rodrigo, did a nice minor turn as the instigator of the films events. Channing Tatum, as fellow free agent Aaron, fits his role well. Paxton is wonderful in his small role as Carano’s father. Michael Douglas, as Coblenz, was good as the government man pulling the strings. Ewan McGregor, as Kenneth the leader of the outside contracting agency, seemed lost in his part. Lem Dobbs wrote an OK script in that it held together enough although it wasn’t powerful. Steven Soderbergh did a great job of taking a moderate script and making this film work interestingly.

Overall: This film was fun and enjoyable to watch because the main character made it work.