Critic Reviews

It’s a sequel that, over a tighter running time, kicks against the law of diminishing returns, and only succumbs to it after a fight.

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

Rarely has a life beyond the law seemed less enticing than it does in Babak Najafi’s bleak crime picture. It’s unrelentingly intense and utterly humorless, but there’s no denying the skill and brio with which it unspools.

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.

Too many characters contribute to a dulling of the cross-cultural spark found in the original (and in the better-known A Prophet). Kinnaman doesn’t have as much to play with this time — without his double life, he’s just an unsmooth criminal.

There's ultimately little in the way of authentically resonant drama underneath the film's self-conscious busy-ness.

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

True to its franchise roots, the film is atmospheric, well acted, and frustratingly intent on draining every last drop of pleasure from the genre-movie conventions it cannibalizes.

The emotional moments never land.