Easy Money

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.

What I really liked about this movie is that no matter where the characters were from, they had actors from that country playing them. This is how it should be done for all films. Many times in Hollywood movies, we see an English-speaking actor playing a foreign character and you can hear an accent. Hollywood thinks they can get away with it because the Americans won't notice. This may be true but this alone is worth 1 point out of 10. If I am watching some Serbians talking among themselves, I want it to be as real as possible. Only a Serb knows how to talk like a Serb and only a German knows how to talk like a German. And the same goes vice- versa, only an American should play an American. And that's what this movie has. It has actors that play characters from their homeland.

This film teaches you how quickly life can turn the other cheek, especially in the crime world. The innocence portrayed by our lead character JW, played by Joel Kinnaman takes you right into this. He gets himself involved in a world where he naturally doesn't belong by making an important decision at the beginning of the film. The movie takes you through all of his emotions as he learns more and more about this new world.

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!

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.

Had big doubts when I came. Had less doubts when I left and they were of another kind. But, big surprise, Swedish film industry has produced a gangster thriller which is on international level, although not the highest.

The business school student here is too fascinated by suburban immigrant mobster life. And he wants the money involved, so he gets into the racket. He's a solitaire in that kind of life, which of course (what did you expect?) is told in a cliché way, but the people you meet aren't just monsters, running the evil machine or being part of it. They are somewhat believable and so is the gloomy mood in this environment.

What happens is rather foreseeable, but it's anyway a quite intelligent movie about crime and criminals. It could have been much much worse.