Good start, but then it gets ruined

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

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.

So the Swedish continue with the dark themes here. It's been a golden period for Swedish creative media following the success of TV series and books all seeming to concentrate on the dark side of life. This ain't no difference as our anti-hero is a young naive man over his head in the world of drugs and gangs. There's only one obvious solution to his problems and we are voyeurs watching this ride.We have a mostly low budget made movie (with admittedly annoying shaky camera work) which sees a wide range of local actors impressing showing the dark side of their life across the ethnic groups in Sweden.The story isn't anything complicated and it's mostly a ride for the viewer. Quite a cynical outlook across classes in Sweden, but you will easily relate some of this to your home countries.I liked it. It's nothing special necessarily but very much worth a watch, and you'll definitely want to watch more with two sequels to date having been made.

Does story believability not count for anything for folks who gave this movie a 10? I left after the following things took place on screen: 1. Prior to a visit to a Swedish prison a visitor is seen putting stiletto-like knives in the bottom of his shoes. He gets into the prison, circa 2010 (which doesn't have metal detector machines) and then walks into a large exercise yard seemingly dressed like many of the prison inmates exercising. He makes contact with the convict he plans on helping escape, clumsily knocks over a single guard and then the two of them race to a tall metal fence adorned by razor wire on the top. (Perhaps the guards in the yard and in the towers were on a union-sanctioned break and weren't allowed to pursue the escapees since no one appeared to be chasing the two.) Not wounded by the razor wire the two escape and are not recaptured. 2. Later on in the movie the cab driver who was covertly following pursuer two, who in turn had caught the one main prison escapee, discovers the escapees semi-automatic handgun on a forest's floor. How did the gun get there? Was the owner not searched by the two men who were intent on beating him to death? Why didn't the cab driver pick the gun up? After these two inanities took place I decided to not watch anymore of what I found to be a confusing movie up till then to begin with. P.S. In reading about "Easy Money" I learned that this was the second movie in a planned trilogy. Perhaps the filmmakers should have had a synopsis precede the escape to help viewers like me understand what had happened before. Having said this though, the two story lapses still stand out as un-thought out mistakes.

Although its plot seems realistic and is based on a solid book (novel of the same name by Jens Lapidus), the story lines becomes incoherent due to frequent jumps between the three main characters: Johan aka JW (played by Joel Kinnaman; great and credible performance), Jorge (Matias Padin Varela) and Mrado (Dragomir Mrsic); the last two seemed just okay, nothing catchy. Lisa Henni as Sophie is just a beautiful blond Sweden is famous for, no memorable scenes with her.It is also distressing to see how gracious immigration policy through several decades has made Sweden a war-field of national gangs (mostly from Balkans) who have introduced severe and ruthless crimes into formerly peaceful Scandinavia. Lots of countries in the world struggle with issues with 2nd generation immigrants in slums who feel themselves alienated.Nevertheless, I will probably watch its sequel Snabba Cash II in the near future - to compare. But the news that Warner Bros. holds the rights to an American remake with Zac Efron - is not good as Efron is rather mediocre actor. Well, remakes are seldom better, especially is the temporal distance is short.