Easy Money (2012)

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.

"Waste of time 1/10 Author: Mats from United Kingdom 4 December 2012*** This review may contain spoilers ***Film starts out pretty good. There is sharp tension between the ethnic Swedes and the immigrant communities. Interesting material, I thought. The movie depict well how extended families are important for the southern European gangsters and how that safety is not available to the ethnic Swedes. After having started great, after one hour the movie starts to sag. It turns into some kind of traditional politically correct production. It is as if the director had second thoughts. After having shown the immigrants to be pretty pathetic individuals, the director feels an urge to show that they are human beings after all. This is done by having the foreign gangsters have little girls and buy dolls and baby clothing. So pathetic. By now the film is really not worth watching. The story of the ethnic Swede studying economics and then just going into heavy crime is just not believable. I started out out thinking that this is a 7 movie after 15 minutes, but then my verdict gradually went down all the way to 1. This is just a waste of time."This movie has very little to do with ethnicity, rather it has to do with class I'd say. Every criminal extended family has a natural protective side against outsiders regardless of which ethnical group the outsiders belong to and regardless if the family consists of Arabs, Swedes, Serbs or is a mix of everything or is called Hells Angels or Bandidos. You don't even have to belong to a criminal family for that matter, as even upper class people are very protective against "outsiders" that they don't consider worthy. After all, in the story JW has a troubled working class background where the father was an alcoholic and has a sister that's been missing for years. He strives and shares the same goals and beliefs with his gangster friends for a life in de luxe by making easy money - in despite of different ethnical backgrounds, which the movie shows plays a very little role when money talks and when even the people within the Serbian mafia don't't trust each other and stab each other's backs. JW and his gangster friends have more in common in their respective working class backgrounds and that they want to change their lives and give it a meaning and to become something they're not, than they have with their own people sharing their ethnical backrounds respectively. That's also what's so great about this movie! It makes you think about how similar class conditions and life backgrounds can have a larger impact on you than you could ever imagine.

Excellent reviews, strong box-office in Sweden, and starring Joel Kinnaman (superb in The Killing), I was stunned at how uninteresting this film turned out for me. This is not to take away anything from the uniformly excellent cast. My favorite Swedish- American Jew, lol, is absolutely fine as the ambitious protagonist, displaying the star power he possesses. But oh the story, not so good. This was hardly original, although the genre rarely delivers something completely different. But I was bored, confused and eventually disinterested in what might happen next. Congrats to everyone involved for their success, but, alas, the film failed to reach me.