Easy Money is a two hour noir / action film from Sweden. Putting this in my schedule at 9 AM on the first Sunday knowing full well it was likely I would be suffering from overindulgence, lack of sleep and the beginnings of festival knee was one of my sketchier moves this year. Luckily this gamble paid off with this fantastic film.
Easy Money follows three main characters, Jorge the recently escaped prisoner, Mrado the Serbian enforcer and JW the taxi driver / student. While Jorge and Mrado are the “real” criminals I find JW the most suspect as he is constantly re-creating himself, layering lies on top of truth to the point where we never really know what kind of person he was, is or could be. We get a pretty decent amount of character development for all three outside of the world of crime. Unlike a movie like Heat where I was screaming inside for a re-edit to cut the detail of the backstory of every, especially once they started in on Dennis Haysbert’s diner cook (seriously just get to a shootout already) Easy Money keeps it moving between the live, the crime and the connection points between the characters. According to the director most of the supporting roles were not played by trained actors, and the realism shows, especially when the Chilean and Serbian cast members are speaking in their mother tongue. The authenticity in the way the untrained actors interact adds another dimension to an already good film, making me very excited to see the sequels that are allegedly scheduled to be filmed and released over the next few years.
Much less excited to see the North American remake that will allegedly start Zac Efron.
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