Filmmaker Daniel Espinosa made quite the arrival earlier this year with the surprise smash Safe House, and now the crime thriller that got him that job has earned a stateside release. Shot in the same jittery look as his Denzel Washington vehicle, Easy Money engages in a class study while disguised as an action melodrama. Upwardly mobile finance student JW (Joel Kinnaman) gets mixed up with a crew of hoi polloi drug dealers in order to drum up some of the title cash for parties with his high-society buddies on the weekend. The first half of the film, with characters vainly trying to act sophisticated in order to get ahead, easily trumps the pontifications about morality, violence, and responsibility that follow. The most powerful moments involve private lives and social conflict, not gunfights. In this world, it's not the blood on your hands that brings you down — it's the stain on your cufflinks.
