Easy Money

The first time I saw this film I had just finished the book. Simply loved the book and I was really looking forward to the movie adaptation. At first I found myself disappointed. The problem according to me was how they had handled the material. The movie just felt like a too trimmed down and simplified adaptation. I understand that you can't bring the entire book to the big screen, but this felt rushed and simple. Character that felt vastly different to their counterparts in the book. It took quite some time before I saw the film again. I decided to try being more objective, not keep irritating myself over the changes. Take it for what it is and not what it could and maybe should have been. I´ve seen it several times since often with long breaks between, meaning years. It seems each time I see it I like it more. Now I think it´s one of the best Swedish thrillers, at least of the ones I have seen. A really gripping movie about criminal underworld, themes of social status, gripping characters and thrilling events. This is a brutal film not just in the action but also the plot. It feels very realistic even if I don´t really know anything about the stuff. The author of the book has personal experience of the world he writes about. The acting is very good. Excellent casting choices. Not only in their performances but they really feel believable in this world. Joel Kinnaman is pretty much as I imagined JW and Matias Varela it totally believable. The actor which makes the best performance is Dragomir Mrsic, his performance is great and his is the most gripping character. The action is among the best in a Swedish movie. Visually great with suspense at the highest. Brutal and tense without overdoing it. Not wanting to bad mouth Swedish movies but the production is really on top. I think that even if you are not familiar with the book you will have little problem in following the plot. The pace is fast but not too much. It still gives time to give us understanding of the characters. Which is totally necessary as the characters are just as interesting as the events they are in, maybe even more so.

Snabba Cash is a brutal, realistic, tense and gripping. They have done a movie that I think does the book justice but also works very well as a movie on its own.

Easy Money (or Snabba Cash to give it its original Swedish title) was originally released in Sweden in 2010, a full three years before it reached the UK, by which time the sequel (snappily entitled Snabba Cash II) had already been out for a year in Scandinavia. Perhaps that at least ensures we won't need to wait too long to find out what happens to the surviving characters.

With three strands that entwine into a single story, Easy Money is a violent, at times bloody, peek under the tarpaulin that covers the Serbian mafia and its nefarious dealings with drugs and murder. JW (Joel Kinnaman) is a clean-cut law student with money issues until the opportunity to run drugs ends the former and resolves the latter. With a girlfriend, Sophie (Lisa Henni), from the right side of town and employers from the wrong side, his life becomes complicated and very tense. Caught between Jorge (Mateas Varela), a fugitive on the run from the cops and the Serbian mafia, and Mrado (Dragomir Mrsic) a mafia hard man, JW winds up in some very deep do-do indeed…

Easy Money carves up the screen in a similar vein to this year's Dead Man Down but lacks the panache. Where as Colin Farrell's film had a certain smoothness to the violence, this is gritty and unfinished. It feels a little rushed at times but that's part of the attraction. You really don't want to mess with any of these characters. Ever.

It's very easy to like JW, even though everything screams that he's a fool who is willingly corrupting himself. It doesn't take a genius to work out there'll be serious consequences come the end of the film, but for whom? Kinnaman, who boosted his international profile with The Killing, is on excellent form here. Think Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Match Point only better. Much, much better.

The characters are rounded well enough for us to step back from them but not so much that they appear sculpted film characters rather than raw, unpleasant lowlifes who'll blow you away if it's ever a threat to their survival.

Easy Money is always compelling and the two-hour running time whizzes by in an instant. Alas, by sheer dint of it being in foreign language, it is unlikely to garner much of an audience in the UK and USA; I was the sole occupant of the cinema last night and, whilst it was a joy for me, it doesn't bode well for the chances of the sequel hitting Bristol.

For the philistines who are unable to watch and read the screen simultaneously, Easy Money is good enough to have been awarded an unnecessary Hollywood remake staring Zac Effron. I have nothing against Effron, on the contrary, he impressed me in The Paperboy last year, it's just that Hollywood does have a tendency to take excellent foreign language films and mutilate them. Disagree? Compare and contrast Let The Right One In with Let Me In, or The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its remake, or the Hollywood adaptation of TV's The Killing, or…

When will Hollywood learn? Stop remaking the great films and TV series and take a look at those that should have been good but bombed. I'm not judging the remake of Easy Money before the cameras even start rolling but, take it from me, it's unlikely to improve on the original. It's certainly no date movie, but a gritty thriller that will happily consume any Friday night.

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JW (Joel Kinnaman) is a poor economics student who is dabbing in questionable money making schemes while faking a double life with his rich acquaintances. He falls for the rich Sophie (Lisa Henni). Jorge (Matias Varela) has just escaped from jail. JW and Jorge is working for the Albanian drug lord Abdulkarim who is trying to put together a big shipment. Meanwhile Mrado (Dragomir Mrsic) is a Serbian enforcer. The Serbian are going to war with Abdulkarim but Mrado has a new responsibility in his daughter and he's planning a final score to get out of it all.

Mrado says that people start becoming greedy and scared. That's what I love about this story. Everybody is a bastard. Nobody is safe. JW thinks he's smarter than he actually is, and he never truly understands that he's expendable. I love how Jorge breaks it all down for JW, and the two men's complicated relationship. There are no angels here, just survivors.

Fortunately, thriller is not dead. Hollywood thriller is a desiccated corpse. It somehow keeps plodding stealing good ideas from around a world. This movie is awaiting a remake in Hollywood. Can't wait to see that disaster. What makes this Swedish thriller fresh and original is the hefty dose of reality and interest in it's characters. They are not just a bunch of crooks and psychopaths, they are human too. Young Swede with expensive tastes and little money, Chilean criminal with dreams and the Serbian enforcer with an 8-year daughter to care for. We see the glimpse of what they are made of. Nothing overly heavy and preachy, but just enough to fell real and plausible. And that is what Hollywood doesn't do. The audience they aim for, pimply, computer game addicted, 14 year olds just don't have the patience for anything else apart from explosions and non-stop action. So, thankfully comes this brilliant flick with 2 sequels to follow.

EASY MONEY is a highly effective slice of Scandi crime drama that blows the socks off the Hollywood competition. It's a film responsible for introducing new talent to the international scene in the form of lead Joel Kinnaman (who went on to be the new ROBOCOP) and director Daniel Espinosa (who went on to direct the Denzel Washington thriller SAFE HOUSE on the strength of this).

The story is a complex but watchable one that tells of various competing criminal factions seeking to control the local drug supply. The mix of amoral characters is what makes this film feel unique; the hero is anything but heroic, merely out to save his own skin, and thus has a kind of vibrant realism missing from all those goody two-shoes in Hollywood flicks. Plus, Dragomir Mrsic's Serbian hit-man is good enough to deserve a film all to himself, and really helps to add quality to the film.

Epinosa's direction is another strength as he forgoes the typical dark and dingy look of a Scandinavian crime flick and instead creates a bright, colourful and beautiful look for the film. I had the pleasure of seeing this in high definition and it really looks a treat. EASY MONEY isn't an action film or a thriller packed with suspense scenes, but the quality of the script and plotting mean you'll be glued to the screen as if it were. Bring on the sequel!