Easy Money

¨Easy cash¨is an absorbing crime tale with electricity pumping through its veins , being based on the novel James Ellroy Calls. An epic European thriller to rival Stieg Larsson .The Swedish import (with the cooler name Snabba Cash) arrives in North America after filling box office coffers in its Norwegian homeland. The film opens with Jorge (Matias Varela) staging a daring prison break (despite only having a year left on his sentence), and subsequently falling right back into the world of drugs and violence that clearly got him locked up in the first place. But a move like that never comes without consequences, as we meet Mrado (Dragomir Mrsic) who has suddenly found . When JW (Joel Kinnaman) becomes a drug runner in order to maintain his double life, his fate becomes tied to two other men: Jorge, a fugitive on the run from both the Serbian mafia and the police, and mafia enforcer Mrado, who is on the hunt for Jorge . JW has more than his next fare in mind as he wants to escape his lower middle class past and starving student present. Opportunity comes knocking when a friend offer him a chance to deal with dark businesses . A multi-cultural pursuit of happiness thanks to cocaine begins with Jonah "Jw" Westlund . Living a double life, J.W. gets in over his head, falling for an heiress (Lisa Henni) and becoming more and more embroiled in criminal activity.

it's incredibly stylish action/drama movie , a rattling good thriller with potentially global appeal . It is entirely criminal world , beautifully rendered and wildly thrilling . This is a sharp-eyed Swedish crime drama , "Snabba Cash," retitled "Easy Money" for North American audiences by The Weinstein Company who has picked it up for U.S. release, one has to to first note its trajectory . Already a hit in Sweden where it was released at the beginning of 2010, the picture's taut, intense and propulsive momentum caught the attention of audiences . This dazzler of a movie is right in his wheelhouse, given that it's about urban criminals with moral codes and strong ethnic identities, plus there's plenty of violence . Good performance by Joel Kinnaman as a finance student by day and drug runner by night to help afford the expensive lifestyle of his wealthy circle of friends . Kinnaman, who also stars in AMC's "The Killing," and will star in the remake of "RoboCop" . The motion picture presented by Martin Scorsese was well realized by director Daniel Espinosa , though being slowly paced and sometimes a little bit boring . Only a few Swedish films cross the pond and get a stateside release , on of them is ¨Easy cash¨ getting success around the world . As Swedish hit as well as hit U.S. theaters , considering that a little feat that the crime drama pulled at the Swedish box office which caught the eye of more than a few Hollywood producers. Sweden has already celebrated the first installment, giving the film three Guldbagges (the country's equivalent of an Oscar), including a win for Kinnaman for Best Actor, and moved on to the second, "Snabba Cash II," with the same artistic and technician .Director Daniel Espinosa replaces a bit of bada-bing with class warfare, thanks to the international wise guy film . Espinosa earned critical acclaim and subsequently hired by Hollywood , where has directed the successful ¨Safe house¨ with Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds .

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.

For more reviews from The Squiss, subscribe to my blog and like the Facebook page.

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.

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.

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!