EASY MONEY/EASY MONEY: HARD TO KILL – Review by MaryAnn Johanson

If you’ve enjoyed the new remake of RoboCop — or even if you didn’t — you can’t go wrong by checking out newly minted Hollywood leading man Joel Kinnaman in a fantastic film made on his home turf of Sweden. (Were you fooled by Kinnaman’s flawless American accent? He’s not American.) Easy Money (aka Snabba cash), from 2010, had only a small release in North America in 2012, unsurprising given the general lack of interest by U.S. audiences in reading subtitles. Its similarly limited release in the U.K. in 2013 is surprising, however, because “Nordic noir” — of which this is a spectacular example — is something of a pop culture phenomenon in the U.K. at the moment. No one here seems to mind reading subtitles in order to wallow in dark, moody, morally ambiguous stories about murder and corruption in the snow, not just at the cinema but across many episodes of imported television dramas as well. Read more>>