40
How many times do these guys need to hear that crime doesn’t pay?
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
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.
70
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.
50
There's ultimately little in the way of authentically resonant drama underneath the film's self-conscious busy-ness.
50
Los Angeles Times by Inkoo Kang
The emotional moments never land.
75
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.
60
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.
75
Najafi stages action scenes with an intense, queasy beauty and elevates what is in its outlines a routine crime drama to near-operatic proportions.
70
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
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.
50
Village Voice by Zachary Wigon
Not fully understanding its own merits, Easy Money is accidentally fascinating in some moments, but purposefully formulaic in many more.