Easy Money: Hard to Kill (2014)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

A compelling follow-up to the first film. This takes place three years after the events of EASY MONEY and follows the fortunes (or rather misfortunes) of a group of disparate and broken characters, each of them possessing a dangerous scheme to make some 'easy money'. Director Daniel Espinosa didn't return for this sequel, but his replacement Babak Najafi does a fine job in recreating the style of the original so that EASY MONEY II feels almost exactly the same as the first in terms of look and feel.The plotting is engaging and the way the various sub-plots weave together is deftly done. There's definitely a tragic and downbeat tone to the story - some might say that it's merely realistic - a 'crime doesn't pay' kind of vibe that runs throughout. The performances are exemplary, with Joel Kinnaman and Dragomir Mrsic particularly shining here and making for a strong double act. There's not as much character depth as in the first film, but on the plus side the focus is on crime throughout without any of the romantic padding or the like.

Follows perfectly what happened in part 1 and again this isn't really a typical mobster flick. You must have seen part one to understand what is going on and again it's not all about the mob itself but it goes really deep into characters.Even as there isn't any shooting going on still it all looks rather realistic. The slashing of ones throat really will get you, sigh, by your throat. So you can guess it, the effects are good.If you like flicks about friendship and trust then this is a must see but if you think you will see the next Godfather, then you better skip this one.Gore 1,5/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5

When I attended a screening of EM/HtK, it was poorly attended. That may because of the blizzard that night, or it may have been because a popular on-line site of movie reviews gave it a mere 53% on their Lettuce meter. At the time, their highest rated film was The LEGO Movie, and that, I think, explains this movie's poor reception in the US.It's a famous truism among Hollywood producers that "People don't go to the movies to get depressed," and Americans might've liked this movie more if, after all the mayhem, the female lead and the young desperado had ridden off into the sunset and were last seen walking down a beach at sunset and holding hands.But for those of us who admire realism, not cartoon fantasy, this is an extraordinarily gripping movie. As Europe suffers through the effects of the IMF's austerity penance, unemployment among young people in some nations approaches 50%, and in such circumstances they turn to crime. This is the case not only in Madrid and Athens (and Detroit), but as people migrate north, everywhere, including Stockholm, where this movie is set.Actor Joel Kinnaman's role is diminished from the first movie in the series, and it's also less interesting, but the rest of the cast more than makes up for this.¡ ≥ SPOILER ALERT ≤ ≥ SPOILER ALERT ≤ !If you have not yet seen EM/HtK, please read no further.The only false note in this grim movie is near the end, where the two sympathetic characters, Nadja, the young woman who has been forced into prostitution, and Jorge, the guy who begs his dead mother for forgiveness for all his misdeeds, fall in love but are tragically gunned down by a shotgun-wielding assassin from the mob. Getting blasted by a 12-gauge at point-blank range would, in reality, have left her viscera splattered across the room, and when the guy takes a load of buckshot in the upper back, he miraculously does not go into shock or even cough blood. Instead, as they are wheeled into the ambulance, they smile and make dewy eyes at each other.It's a mawkishly sentimental scene in an otherwise uncompromising movie.

This was one of the movies I was looking forward to see this year. (That said, I didn't have high expectations, I was only looking forward to see it)Mostly I was curious of how they would build things up after a so well-written and trustworthy predecessor. I was a bit disappointed as the movie turned out to be like most movies in the genre. The movie is worth watching, but compared to Snabba Cash /Easy money it's not a worthy followup.Easy Money was based on a book by a writer who has got direct contact with people involved in this kind of criminal activities, which made it trustworthy, down to earth but still exciting in a Swedish environment.Easy Money 2 however, is loosely based on the trilogy of these books, which makes the movie lack of facts, reliability and makes it "just another movie" in the genre.The actors do play their part in this movie, the screenplay is however not that good, which makes the overall experience worse.Give it a shot, and see for yourself, but try to see it as just a movie that have the same characters as another movie, don't watch it if you're looking for a good sequel.