Trafficking violations
Easy Money
(out of 4) Starring Joel Kinnaman, Matias Varela, Dragomir Mrsic and Lisa Henni. Directed by Daniel Espinosa. 124 minutes. Opens Aug. 24 at the Carlton. 14A
Chalk another one up for Swedish crime-thriller novels.
Yet another cracking example of how Swedes deliver the goods with pulse-pounding intrigue stories emerges with a movie born from a bestselling Swedish novel Easy Money (Snabba Cash), which finally arrives in theatres two years after its Toronto International Film Festival debut.
As in Stieg Larsson’s international smash Millennium Trilogy and subsequent films, the central character in Jens Lapidus’s 2006 novel Snabba Cash, renamed Easy Money, is an outsider. But that’s where comparisons end.
University business student Johan “J.W.” Westlund (played with calm assurance by The Killing’s Joel Kinnaman, star of the RoboCop reboot that starts filming in Toronto next month) desperately wants to be an insider.
He’s broke and drives a cab at night, selling essays to rich kids to make ends meet. But J.W. manages to bluff his way into young moneyed Stockholm society thanks to movie-star good looks and the careful study of fashion magazines. And when he meets gorgeous Sophie (Lisa Henni) who comes from big money, he has extra incentive to up his game.
When his shady boss at the cab office offers an end to J.W.’s money woes by suggesting he help with a drug buy, the temptation is too much for J.W. to resist. It won’t be without consequences. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
Aclassic tale of seduction by quick cash, Easy Money earns its stripes by being both a slick, action-packed thriller that nicely amps up tension and a smart three-hand story that follows a trio of main players. Their tales mesh like clockwork in an international stew of languages including Spanish, Serbian, German, Albanian and English.
Chilean Jorge (Matias Varela), whose prison escape opens the film, is on the run from both the cops and the Serbian mob, especially the menacing enforcer Mrado (Dragomir Mrsic) who works for a ruthless drug kingpin named Radovan. Neither have qualms about how they right perceived wrongs.
Radovan (Dejan Kukic) decides he needs a Swede to help out with some elements of a huge drug shipment and J.W. finds himself more deeply involved in the trade than he ever envisioned. His quick visit to the criminal world is hardly the easy going he envisioned and he ends up hiding a badly beaten Jorge in his dorm room after the Chilean runs afoul of the Serbs. The two form an uneasy alliance.
The expertly woven stories reveal J.W., Jorge and even the cold-hearted Mrado have deeply personal and surprisingly sentimental reasons for doing what they do, adding notes of understandable urgency.
J.W. knows just which rich old boys are hurting, thanks to the tanking European economy, and uses inside information from his society life to come up with a plan. He devises novel means to help the Serbs launder the drug money they plan to pile up after selling their wares, which will be smuggled into Sweden via creative means. Drug dogs will never have the same meaning again. A double cross becomes a triple cross as J.W., Jorge and Mrado find their destinies bumping into each other and J.W. is forced to accept that the easy out from the criminal life he was counting on is only a phantom. Fast-paced and shot with an unsteady camera style that is occasionally distracting, director Daniel Espinosa ( Safe House) keeps the tension redlining through most of Easy Money. The movie did decent box office numbers in Europe and was a hit at home. A sequel has already been shot and is awaiting release. It may have taken two years to get Easy Money into theatres in North America, but that doesn’t mean Hollywood has been sitting on its hands. There is talk an American remake is in the works, starring Zac Efron. Best to see the real deal first.