Easy Money: Hard to Kill

Najafi stages action scenes with an intense, queasy beauty and elevates what is in its outlines a routine crime drama to near-operatic proportions.

For the second film, Babak Najafi has succeeded Daniel Espinosa as director. The structure here is more mechanical, and the ambience scruffier, as the complicated story shifts from one disreputable lowlife to another.

Once again, the most resonant drama here is all about conveying a self-loathing born of inescapable circumstances.

If you DON'T go into this movie knowing it's a sequel, you're gonna have at least 20 minutes of rough sledding ahead of you, because there's no recap from the first movie.

The emotional moments never land.

Not fully understanding its own merits, Easy Money is accidentally fascinating in some moments, but purposefully formulaic in many more.

How many times do these guys need to hear that crime doesn’t pay?