Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Snabba Cash’ On Netflix, Where Three People Find That Getting That Easy Money Is Incredibly Difficult

Over a decade ago, a Swedish film called Snabba Cash (or Easy Money), starring Joel Kinnaman was released, and proved to be so popular that it spawned two sequels. Now, a series that’s considered to be a reboot of sorts has been produced, and it looks and feels quite a bit different from the films. But it’s still about the pursuit of fast money, in various forms. 

SNABBA CASH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman psyches herself up in a bathroom mirror before she storms into the incubator where she works — though her pass card doesn’t work because she’s behind on rent — for a pitch meeting.

The Gist: Leya (Evin Ahmad) has a great idea that she thinks will hit it big: An app that predicts how well an entrepreneurial idea will fare by analyzing reaction to it on social media. She has already gone through one round of funding and is in this meeting to ask for more, considering she’s tapped out. She convinces the initial investor, Marcus Werner (Peter Eggers) to give her more, but his first payment was in the form of convertible bonds, which could mean that he can squeeze her out if he converts the bonds to stocks; it seems that he’s letting the due date pass so he can do just that.

Leya is near desperate, working in a local Middle Eastern restaurant and taking care of her 5 year-old son Sami (Lennox Söderström) by herself since Sammi’s father died. She figures the app, TargetCoach, is her ticket out of the grind and to an easier life for her and Sami. But she gets concerned when the investor doesn’t send over the contract and starts to realized the money he said he’d invest isn’t going to materialize.

Salim (Alexander Abdallah) sings at parties and weddings, but he also has another job, as we see when he dons a puffer vest after a gig, puts his hood up and shoots members of a rival gang who has been making drug deals on their turf. The gang’s leader, Ravy (Dada Fungula Bozela), would like to shoot up the rival gang and get them out of the way, but he knows doing so will piss off Marko (Johan Jonason) who is supplying the drugs each gang is selling. Still, it doesn’t prevent Salim and his friend Ari (Robin Nazari), whom he’s recruited into the gang, to go shoot up the rival gang at the restaurant where they meet.

Tim (Ali Alarik) is a teenager who, with his two buddies, sets fire to the motorcycle of someone who spit on his girlfriend’s foot. But later, he’s paid a visit from Salim and his associate, demanding that he pay 20,000 kr for the damage. Where will he get that kind of money so quickly?

Back to Leya: She is connected to the gang because Ravy is the boy’s uncle; he buys Ravi a fancy toy car, which Leya returns to him because it’s too big and too expensive. She also almost has sex with Salim after meeting him at a party her restaurant was hosting. But the biggest event is that, after the investor doesn’t come through with the money he said he’d give her, she goes to a pitch contest with well-known investor Tomas Storm (Olle Sarri), at first Storm picks no one pitching to him, but she goes after him and tells him he wouldn’t have lost money on one of his early deals if he used TargetCoach. When he shows up at her restaurant a few days later, things start to look up for her.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Snabba Cash is a reboot of the Easy Money trilogy of films created from the novels by Jens Lapidus (Lapidus is one of the writers of this series, along with Oskar Söderlund), but with a new cast of characters that represent what Sweden’s population looks like now, with a cast of characters that are largely Middle Eastern. With regards to pace and the get-rich-quick aesthetic, though, we kept thinking of HBO’s series Industry.

Our Take: Snabba Cash (literally “easy money” in Swedish) is about a third of a good show. Of the three storylines we’re introduced to in the first episode is Leya’s; she’s hustling to try to make something of herself, and it looks to be showing some evidence that, in the startup world, there’s just as much conning and influence-peddling as there is in the drug world.

That’s why we guess Leya’s story is being paralleled to Salim’s. But while Leya’s story is compelling because she’s hustling her butt off trying to get the funding her company needs to not only make it but to set her and her son on an easier path in life, Sahlim’s story seems to be a straightforward story of gangs fighting for turf.

Yes, there’s an artist in Salim that is in conflict with his vest-wearing, gun-toting day job, and he sees the consequences of this turf war when his buddy Ali is shot in retaliation for their attack on the rival gang. But there isn’t a whole lot interesting about the gang story, except when it intersects with Leya’s life. It wouldn’t be a surprise that Leya’s dead husband was killed while working for Ravy’s gang, and that is playing into her fierce determination to make the fast buck in a “legitimate” way. How those two will mix as the series goes forward will hopefully make Salim’s story more dynamic.

We get so little of Tim’s story that we have no idea where it will go. He seems to be so devoted to his teen love that he’ll destroy property to defend her, but how that translates to the debt he has with Salim’s gang is anyone’s guess. Will he work off the money by working for them? Will he turn to other crimes to get the money? There’s so little to hang onto at the end of the first episode we wished that the time was just used to dive further into Leya’s end of the story.

Sex and Skin: Like we said, Leya and Salim almost have sex, but they really don’t get too far before she gets a call from her waylaid babysitter.

Parting Shot: After Tomas Storm tells Leya that his organization is going to vet her in preparation for him to invest, she takes a breath, and says to herself, “Okay.” She’s ready to go.

Sleeper Star: We liked Dada Fungula Bozela as Ravy, who has such a calm demeanor that he’s downright scary as the leader of the gang Salim is in. He knows not to go off half-cocked but also knows that he will do anything to protect his gang and their turf.

Most Pilot-y Line: Talking about the rival gang and how he and his gang have to stick together, Ravy tells Salim, “I’d rather their moms cry than ours.” Oy, that’s more a “gang member on TV” line than an actual thing a real person might say.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re recommending Snabba Cash because we’re interested in Leya’s story and Evin Ahmad’s strong performance. But the rest of the characters are less compelling, at least in the first episode.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Snabba Cash On Netflix