Easy Money, review - Telegraph Dir: Daniél Espinosa stars: Joel Kinnaman, Matias Padin Varela, Dragomir Mrsic (15 cert, 125 min) Easy Money, a 2010 adaptation of a hit Swedish crime novel, comes to us late, translated and made bland from its more memorable original title, Snabba Cash. It has already generated two sequels in Sweden, and talk of a remake with Zac Efron, because seemingly every successful thriller to come out of the country - from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to Let the Right One In - is deemed to require a Hollywood revamp. The core idea is certainly appealing. A student called JW, played here by the suave, golden-haired Joel Kinnaman, dreams of joining Stockholm's trust-fund elite, but is coasting on charm alone - he's an interloper. He has low-level connections to organised crime, and decides to get in deeper to make his fortune, agreeing to save a prison escapee and drug runner (Matias Padin Varela) from a Yugoslavian hitman called Mrado (Dragomir Mrsic). It's certainly a movie for its moment: JW's later idea to launder money using the failing banks is a clever way to exploit an already corrupted economy. The unravelling of his master plan suggests that it might be crime, in time-honoured fashion, that's not paying, but it could just as easily be dabbling in finance. The director, Daniél Espinosa, has already gone on to bigger things with the Denzel Washington/Ryan Reynolds vehicle Safe House - a much weaker effort than this. But there's still a problem, which is Easy Money's straggly plot, a story stretched thinly between two many characters, without the dynamism or momentum to keep itself charging onwards. When Mrado reluctantly agrees to joint custody of a young daughter, it's on one level a commendable effort to enrich the character, but stalls the movie's whole middle section. A good remake needs a leaner, more pragmatic build, and to keep its focus sharper - on the nervous antihero with his feet in two worlds.