Easy Money 2: Hard to Kill.

This second film in Swedish franchise based on Jens Lapidus’s novels Snabba cash has a very penultimate feel, seemingly dedicating itself to setting up the third film in the series. Easy Money 2: Hard to Kill (2012) is a follow up to Easy Money released in 2010. This time we have Babak Najafi at the helm instead of Daniel Espinosa but the story continues basically from where the previous movie finished. We now find Johan ‘JW’ Westland sharing a cell in the State Prison with Mrado Slovovic. Mrado, following the shooting at the end of the previous film, is now confined to a wheel chair but surprisingly both men are getting on really well! When JW is on release from prison to help him adapt ready for his permanent release he decides not to go back and instead arranges an escape plan for his crippled cellmate. Meanwhile the man with nine lives Jorge Salinas Barrio, who is also on the run from prison, sets up a drug deal to end all drug deals and Mahmud owes a large sum of money to the Serbian Mafia and must pay it back on the threat of his life.

Another cracking yarn where we again observe Stockholm’s sinister underworld and its racial tensions. The cast has not changed with Joel Kinnaman as JW, Matias Varela as Jorge, Dragomir Mrsic as Mrado and the Lebanese born actor Fares Fares as Mahmud.  Maybe not quite as exciting as the previous outing but certainly gives you an appetite for Easy Money 3: Life Deluxe.        

Snabba Cash (Easy Money)

I've never made a secret of how much I have enjoyed Scandinavian drama both in the cinema and on the TV but Swedish born director Daniel Espinosa's breakthrough film is really something special. A massive box office success in its own country, it’s based on a best selling novel by criminal defence lawyer Jens Lapidus adapted by Maria Karlsson it's a gripping account of contemporary Stockholm’s underworld, looking closely at the dark underbelly of organised crime.

 

 Aspiring yuppie Johan Westlund.

Johan Westlund (Joel Kinnaman) known as JW is a poor but bright economics undergraduate from a working class background who writes term papers for richer scholar’s, he also drives an illegal cab at night to earn extra money to allow him to hob nob with the Swedish jet set whom he aspires to join.  He falls in love with an upper class girl and is soon lured into a world of crime. Jorge (Matias Padin Varela) is a fugitive who has escaped from prison and is planning to import a massive cargo of coke and then disappear for good. He’s on the run from the both the police and the Serbian mafia, whose hit man Mrado (Dragomir Mrsic) is forced to take care of his young daughter when social services removes her from the care of her drug addicted mother.

 

Muslim gangster Jorge. 

Why is most of Scandinavian crime drama so good? I don't think there's an easy answer but if we take Snabba Cash (Easy Money) (2010) as an example we can analysis it as follows. Its thrilling, entertaining and well paced, with a totally absorbing story line involving a drug war between Muslims and Serb's. The acting is totally convincing and the characters are believable. This is not your standard police procedural and there's far more to it than some of the American crime dramas including the fact that even villains can have family ties and failing banks can be taken over by criminals!

 

Serbian hit man Mrado.

Incidentally for some utterly ridiculous reason Warner Bros intend to remake the film? But the good news is that there are two sequels, one already released and another in the pipeline so we won't have to wait long for more helpings of this first rate Swedish crime drama. 

Did you know that ‘crisis’ and ‘opportunity’ are the same word in Chinese?