Snabba Cash (film)
Encyclopedia
Easy Money is a Swedish thriller film directed by Daniel Espinosa
that was released on 15 January 2010. It is based on the 2006 novel of the same name
by Jens Lapidus
. Joel Kinnaman
stars in the lead role of Johan "JW" Westlund, a rather poor man living a double life in the upper class
areas of Stockholm. After meeting a wealthy girl, he is enticed into the world of organized crime
and begins to sell cocaine
to afford his expensive lifestyle. Easy Money was well received by critics and was a hit at the box office.
Two sequels to the film will be filmed in 2011 and the first is scheduled to be released in 2012, followed by the second in 2013. Warner Bros.
holds the rights to an American remake of Easy Money, which is set to star Zac Efron
.
. A romance with the upper class girl Sophie leads to him being enticed into the world of organized crime. Abdulkarim, who is running the taxi business, offers JW to begin selling cocaine
.
Jorge Salinas Barrio is a Chilean man who went to prison after being caught in the drug business. He has now escaped and is on the run from the police. Jorge knows everything about cocaine. He has a plan: to revenge those who snitched on him, among them Yugoslavian mafia boss Radovan Kranjic, and to make one final cocaine delivery and then leave the country for good.
Mrado Slovovic, a hitman who runs errands for the Yugoslavian mafia, is sent by Radovan on a mission to take care of Jorge. At the same time has to struggle with taking care of his eight-year-old daughter, who he is forced to take with him on his job.
These three characters cross paths through their dreams about quick earnings. Once JW and Abdulkarim have the cocaine sales going they want to expand. Abdulkarim has heard of Jorge, who has at the time made an escape. The word on the street is that Jorge has learned everything about the cocaine business while in prison, and thus JW gets an assignment to hire him. Simultaneously Jorge has tried to blackmail the Yugoslavian mafia boss. Mrado has been assigned to make him think otherwise. When JW finally finds Jorge he is laying beaten-up in a forest, courtesy of Mrado. Abdulkarim takes care of Jorge, and they start working together.
released the novel Snabba cash
in 2006. It received praise from critics and was a success in terms of sales. Ever since it came out, Swedish director Daniel Espinosa
dreamed of getting the opportunity to adapt it into a film. The opportunity came only a few years later when he met film producer Fredrik Wikström who asked him to direct the film. Espinosa has said that the book is important to him because of his Chilean roots and because he was raised in the Swedish suburbs. "When I lived in Skogås
there were not so many Chileans, so I hung out with Yugoslavians [...] until I was 17 years old. Then a lot of crazy stuff happened and I ended up at Sigtuna
with a bunch of upper class brats."
Joel Kinnaman
was cast in the lead role of Johan "JW" Westlund. He told Helsingborgs Dagblad
that "It is a difficult role and a difficult character to play. I love my character deeply, but he makes a lot of decisions in life that are idiotic and he chooses paths that lead to disaster and that gets unbelievably painful consequences for both him and the people that mean something for him." Filming began in March 2009 in Stockholm. Other shooting locations include Gothenburg
and Germany (9–11 June 2009).
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In December 2009 Lapidus told the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet
that he had seen an early version of the film and "it feels good. The film is based on my book, but is at the same time a story of its own. Naturally my main characters are in it and they have managed to capture the authentic feel, but I haven't written the manuscript, I've only given pointers." Lapidus has written two back-to-back sequels to Snabba cash, which are also to be adapted into films. Filming is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2011 with the same director and cast members. The films will be released in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
soon acquired the rights, after a bidding war, to distribute the film in the United States, Germany, and Italy. In another bidding war between Warner Bros.
, Universal Studios
, Summit Entertainment
, Paramount Pictures
, 20th Century Fox
, The Weinstein Company, and Mandate Pictures
, Warner Bros. won the rights for an American remake. Zac Efron
will star in and produce the film. It is supposedly part of a step he is taking towards becoming known as a serious actor and not just a teen heartthrob.
Fredrik Wikström, a producer of Swedish film, will also be a producer on Warner Bros.'s remake. He commented on the hype of the original film in Sweden: "We had a huge hype for the film before anyone had even seen it; everyone was hoping it would be the next Stieg Larsson
[a Swedish author whose novels have become successful films]. The film premiered Jan. 15 in Sweden, and the eyes were on us from the start. Somehow a bootleg DVD of the film made it to L.A.
and was passed around. We started getting calls. Less than three months later we did the deal with Warner Bros."
critic Karolina Fjellborg gave it four out of five stars, commenting that Espinosa "has made a believable, well-acted, nice-looking, and surprisingly thrilling film, with a nerve and a pace that is often missing in Swedish thrillers." She also praised the cast of the film, Kinnaman in particular. Expressen
s Miranda Sigander wrote that Kinnaman plays JW "in a natural and convincing way and steals the show with his charisma." Mats Johnson of Göteborgs-Posten
gave the film a 3/5 rating for "the realism and the intensity in the best scenes of the film, and for the convincing acting by the main cast members." He added, however, that the film lacks coherence and that the story becomes disjointed because of the constant jumps between the three main characters. Sveriges Television
's Jerker Peterson, on the other hand, thought that Espinosa and his writer Maria Karlsson were able to "nicely keep together the straggling story." He gave the film a rating of four out of five and commented that it is "altogether a really sharp thriller and a good start to the Swedish film year." In his book Swedish Sensationsfilms: A Clandestine History of Sex, Thrillers, and Kicker Cinema
, Daniel Ekeroth notes that the movie is, unlike many other Swedish crime films, "without any tired old inspectors" and that that fact is "reason enough for praise!" He continues by saying that Snabba Cash has "sharp pacing, a fresh storyline, and above all a sinister portrayal of Stockholm as a cold and dark place." .
Daniel Espinosa
Jorge Daniel Espinosa is a Swedish film director from Trångsund, Stockholm. He attended the National Film School of Denmark and graduated in 2001. His third feature film, Easy Money, was the Swedish film with most admissions in Sweden in 2010.-Filmography: I Country of the majority production...
that was released on 15 January 2010. It is based on the 2006 novel of the same name
Snabba cash
Snabba cash or Easy money is a Stockholm noir novel from 2006 by Jens Lapidus. It has been a success in term of sales, and the paperback was the fourth best seller of Swedish novels in 2007...
by Jens Lapidus
Jens Lapidus
Jens Lapidus is a Swedish criminal defense lawyer and author, who made his writing debut in August 2006 with Snabba Cash, an account of the Stockholm underworld, and the first of The Stockholm Noir Trilogy. Two years later the second installment, Aldrig Fucka Upp was published by Wahlström &...
. Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman is a Swedish-American actor from Stockholm. He is best known for playing the lead role in the critically acclaimed Swedish film Easy Money, and for his role as Frank Wagner in the Johan Falk film series – a role that earned him a Guldbagge Award nomination in the "Best Supporting...
stars in the lead role of Johan "JW" Westlund, a rather poor man living a double life in the upper class
Upper class
In social science, the "upper class" is the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class may have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area.- Historical meaning :...
areas of Stockholm. After meeting a wealthy girl, he is enticed into the world of organized crime
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
and begins to sell cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
to afford his expensive lifestyle. Easy Money was well received by critics and was a hit at the box office.
Two sequels to the film will be filmed in 2011 and the first is scheduled to be released in 2012, followed by the second in 2013. Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
holds the rights to an American remake of Easy Money, which is set to star Zac Efron
Zac Efron
Zachary David Alexander "Zac" Efron is an American actor. He began acting professionally in the early 2000s and became known with his lead roles in the Disney Channel Original Movie High School Musical, the WB series Summerland, and the 2007 film version of the Broadway musical Hairspray...
.
Plot
Johan "JW" Westlund is a man living in Stockholm, originally from the countryside but feigning the appearance of a "Stekare" (in Swedish parlance, a lifestyle based on flaunting one's apparent wealth), actually leading a double life driving taxi illegally to finance his expensive life on StureplanStureplan
Stureplan is a high-end public square in central Stockholm, between Norrmalm and Östermalm. The square connects the major streets Kungsgatan, Birger Jarlsgatan and Sturegatan...
. A romance with the upper class girl Sophie leads to him being enticed into the world of organized crime. Abdulkarim, who is running the taxi business, offers JW to begin selling cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
.
Jorge Salinas Barrio is a Chilean man who went to prison after being caught in the drug business. He has now escaped and is on the run from the police. Jorge knows everything about cocaine. He has a plan: to revenge those who snitched on him, among them Yugoslavian mafia boss Radovan Kranjic, and to make one final cocaine delivery and then leave the country for good.
Mrado Slovovic, a hitman who runs errands for the Yugoslavian mafia, is sent by Radovan on a mission to take care of Jorge. At the same time has to struggle with taking care of his eight-year-old daughter, who he is forced to take with him on his job.
These three characters cross paths through their dreams about quick earnings. Once JW and Abdulkarim have the cocaine sales going they want to expand. Abdulkarim has heard of Jorge, who has at the time made an escape. The word on the street is that Jorge has learned everything about the cocaine business while in prison, and thus JW gets an assignment to hire him. Simultaneously Jorge has tried to blackmail the Yugoslavian mafia boss. Mrado has been assigned to make him think otherwise. When JW finally finds Jorge he is laying beaten-up in a forest, courtesy of Mrado. Abdulkarim takes care of Jorge, and they start working together.
Cast
- Joel KinnamanJoel KinnamanJoel Kinnaman is a Swedish-American actor from Stockholm. He is best known for playing the lead role in the critically acclaimed Swedish film Easy Money, and for his role as Frank Wagner in the Johan Falk film series – a role that earned him a Guldbagge Award nomination in the "Best Supporting...
– Johan "JW" Westlund - Matias Padin Varela – Jorge Salinas Barrio
- Dragomir Mrsic – Mrado Slovovic
- Lisa Henni – Sophie
- Mahmut Suvakci – Abdulkarim
- Jones Danko – Fahdi
- Lea Stojanov – Lovisa
- Dejan ČukićDejan CukicDejan Cukić is a Serbian rock musician, journalist and writer.During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Cukić was the frontman of the New Wave band Bulevar, releasing two albums with the band. After Bulevar disbanded in 1982, he retired from music...
– Radovan Kranjic - Miodrag Stojanovic – Nenad
- Joel SpiraJoel SpiraJoel Boris Spira is a Swedish film, television and theatre actor.-Personal:While studying biology at the University of Stockholm Spira decided to give acting a chance. After just spending one semester at Spegelteatern in Stockholm he applied to the well respected Malmö Theatre Academy where he got...
– Nippe - Christian Hillborg – Jetset-Carl
- Jan Waldekranz – Carls far
- Annika Ryberg Whittembury – Paola Salinas Barrio
- Fares FaresFares FaresFares Fares in Beirut, Lebanon, is a Swedish film actor with Assyrian/Syriac origin. He is the brother of film director Josef Fares, and has several times played major parts in his movies, including Jalla! Jalla! and Kopps. He has also starred in Bang Bang Orangutang and Kill Your Darlings...
– Mahmoud
Production and sequels
Jens LapidusJens Lapidus
Jens Lapidus is a Swedish criminal defense lawyer and author, who made his writing debut in August 2006 with Snabba Cash, an account of the Stockholm underworld, and the first of The Stockholm Noir Trilogy. Two years later the second installment, Aldrig Fucka Upp was published by Wahlström &...
released the novel Snabba cash
Snabba cash
Snabba cash or Easy money is a Stockholm noir novel from 2006 by Jens Lapidus. It has been a success in term of sales, and the paperback was the fourth best seller of Swedish novels in 2007...
in 2006. It received praise from critics and was a success in terms of sales. Ever since it came out, Swedish director Daniel Espinosa
Daniel Espinosa
Jorge Daniel Espinosa is a Swedish film director from Trångsund, Stockholm. He attended the National Film School of Denmark and graduated in 2001. His third feature film, Easy Money, was the Swedish film with most admissions in Sweden in 2010.-Filmography: I Country of the majority production...
dreamed of getting the opportunity to adapt it into a film. The opportunity came only a few years later when he met film producer Fredrik Wikström who asked him to direct the film. Espinosa has said that the book is important to him because of his Chilean roots and because he was raised in the Swedish suburbs. "When I lived in Skogås
Skogås
Skogås is a district of Huddinge Municipality in Sweden, 15 kilometres south of Stockholm along the railroad to the city and harbour of Nynäshamn. Population in Skogås reaches 13,000 but lately the suburb has conjoined with its northern neighbour Trångsund, forming a municipality part with a...
there were not so many Chileans, so I hung out with Yugoslavians [...] until I was 17 years old. Then a lot of crazy stuff happened and I ended up at Sigtuna
Sigtuna
Sigtuna is a locality situated in Sigtuna Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden with 18 inhabitants in 2005. It is the namesake of the municipality even though the seat is in Märsta....
with a bunch of upper class brats."
Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman
Joel Kinnaman is a Swedish-American actor from Stockholm. He is best known for playing the lead role in the critically acclaimed Swedish film Easy Money, and for his role as Frank Wagner in the Johan Falk film series – a role that earned him a Guldbagge Award nomination in the "Best Supporting...
was cast in the lead role of Johan "JW" Westlund. He told Helsingborgs Dagblad
Helsingborgs Dagblad
Helsingborgs Dagblad is the largest local newspaper in Swedish, published in Helsingborg in Skåne. It was founded in 1847. In 1892 it became one of the first daily papers in Sweden....
that "It is a difficult role and a difficult character to play. I love my character deeply, but he makes a lot of decisions in life that are idiotic and he chooses paths that lead to disaster and that gets unbelievably painful consequences for both him and the people that mean something for him." Filming began in March 2009 in Stockholm. Other shooting locations include Gothenburg
Gothenburg
Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...
and Germany (9–11 June 2009).
Svenska Dagbladet
Svenska Dagbladet is a daily newspaper in Sweden. The first issue appeared on 18 December 1884. Svenska Dagbladet is published in Stockholm and provides coverage of national and international news as well as local coverage of the Greater Stockholm region...
that he had seen an early version of the film and "it feels good. The film is based on my book, but is at the same time a story of its own. Naturally my main characters are in it and they have managed to capture the authentic feel, but I haven't written the manuscript, I've only given pointers." Lapidus has written two back-to-back sequels to Snabba cash, which are also to be adapted into films. Filming is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2011 with the same director and cast members. The films will be released in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
Distribution and remake
Easy Money was released in Sweden on 15 January 2010. At the Berlin Film Festival film festival that year it raised international interest. The American film studio The Weinstein CompanyThe Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company is an American film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after the brothers left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979...
soon acquired the rights, after a bidding war, to distribute the film in the United States, Germany, and Italy. In another bidding war between Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
, Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
, Summit Entertainment
Summit Entertainment
Summit Entertainment LLC is an independent film studio headquartered in Santa Monica, California with international offices in London.-History:...
, Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
, The Weinstein Company, and Mandate Pictures
Mandate Pictures
Mandate Pictures was originally an independent film entertainment studio, founded in 2003. Today, Mandate Pictures is a full-service production and financing company, acquired by Lionsgate in 2007. Mandate continues to operate as an independent brand delivering commercial and independent films...
, Warner Bros. won the rights for an American remake. Zac Efron
Zac Efron
Zachary David Alexander "Zac" Efron is an American actor. He began acting professionally in the early 2000s and became known with his lead roles in the Disney Channel Original Movie High School Musical, the WB series Summerland, and the 2007 film version of the Broadway musical Hairspray...
will star in and produce the film. It is supposedly part of a step he is taking towards becoming known as a serious actor and not just a teen heartthrob.
Fredrik Wikström, a producer of Swedish film, will also be a producer on Warner Bros.'s remake. He commented on the hype of the original film in Sweden: "We had a huge hype for the film before anyone had even seen it; everyone was hoping it would be the next Stieg Larsson
Stieg Larsson
Karl Stig-Erland Larsson , who wrote professionally as Stieg Larsson, was a Swedish journalist and writer, born in Skelleftehamn outside Skellefteå. He is best known for writing the "Millennium series" of crime novels, which were published posthumously...
[a Swedish author whose novels have become successful films]. The film premiered Jan. 15 in Sweden, and the eyes were on us from the start. Somehow a bootleg DVD of the film made it to L.A.
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
and was passed around. We started getting calls. Less than three months later we did the deal with Warner Bros."
Reception
Easy Money was an instant hit in Sweden with more than 100,000 tickets sold during the film's first weekend in theaters, topping the box office charts. AftonbladetAftonbladet
Aftonbladet is a Swedish tabloid founded by Lars Johan Hierta in 1830 during the modernization of Sweden. It is one of the larger daily newspapers in the Nordic countries. Aftonbladet is owned by the Swedish Trade Union Confederation and Norwegian media group Schibsted, and its editorial page...
critic Karolina Fjellborg gave it four out of five stars, commenting that Espinosa "has made a believable, well-acted, nice-looking, and surprisingly thrilling film, with a nerve and a pace that is often missing in Swedish thrillers." She also praised the cast of the film, Kinnaman in particular. Expressen
Expressen
Expressen is one of two nationwide evening tabloid newspapers in Sweden, the other being Aftonbladet. Expressen was founded in 1944; its symbol is a wasp and slogans "it stings" or "Expressen to your rescue", always on the reader's side....
s Miranda Sigander wrote that Kinnaman plays JW "in a natural and convincing way and steals the show with his charisma." Mats Johnson of Göteborgs-Posten
Göteborgs-Posten
Göteborgs-Posten is a major daily newspaper in Sweden. It is published in Gothenburg, with containing coverage of local, regional, national and international issues. It is chiefly distributed in western Götaland. It has the second largest national circulation, after Dagens Nyheter and before...
gave the film a 3/5 rating for "the realism and the intensity in the best scenes of the film, and for the convincing acting by the main cast members." He added, however, that the film lacks coherence and that the story becomes disjointed because of the constant jumps between the three main characters. Sveriges Television
Sveriges Television
Sveriges Television AB , Sweden's Television, is a national television broadcaster based in Sweden, funded by a compulsory fee to be paid by all television owners...
's Jerker Peterson, on the other hand, thought that Espinosa and his writer Maria Karlsson were able to "nicely keep together the straggling story." He gave the film a rating of four out of five and commented that it is "altogether a really sharp thriller and a good start to the Swedish film year." In his book Swedish Sensationsfilms: A Clandestine History of Sex, Thrillers, and Kicker Cinema
Swedish Sensationsfilms: A Clandestine History of Sex, Thrillers, and Kicker Cinema
Swedish Sensationsfilms: A Clandestine History of Sex, Thrillers, and Kicker Cinema is a book by Daniel Ekeroth. The book details the history of alternative Swedish cinema, the so called sensationsfilm...
, Daniel Ekeroth notes that the movie is, unlike many other Swedish crime films, "without any tired old inspectors" and that that fact is "reason enough for praise!" He continues by saying that Snabba Cash has "sharp pacing, a fresh storyline, and above all a sinister portrayal of Stockholm as a cold and dark place." .