How to Make a Killing Review

Glen Powell's Streak of Aggressively Okay Movies Continues

By: Marc Kozak

How to Make a Killing

Glen Powell's Streak of Aggressively Okay Movies Continues

By: Marc Kozak

Someone alert the authorities: we are quickly reaching the point where we need to set a moratorium on eat-the-rich movies. As wealthy people continue to be the worst out in the real world, there’s been a noticeable uptick in film and television projects about rich people behaving very badly – if they can’t get their comeuppance in reality, at least we can punish them in fiction. As much as I support the general notion, it’s gotten to the point where there isn’t much left to say on the topic, and the pleasures of the revenge fantasy are starting to wear thin. But these are the types of projects getting funded these days, approved by executives of large media companies with likely little regard for the irony.

Writer/director John Patton Ford dug deep for IP that fits the current moment, loosely adapting the 1949 British film Kind Hearts and Coronets into his second feature film, How to Make a Killing. It’s a black comedy that feels a bit like a mashup of Succession, Knives Out, and No Other Choice. You can more or less see where things are headed from the logline alone: A man discovers he is eighth in line for a rather large inheritance and decides to eliminate everyone in front of him. The result is a fairly tepid affair that isn’t dark enough, funny enough, or clever enough to be anything more than a run-of-the-mill satire.

It's also the latest in a line of very similar roles for Glen Powell, who is starting to get dangerously close to losing his bankable “movie star” credentials. The script doesn’t do him a lot of favors in this instance, as we aren’t given much insight into his character, who isn't much of one in the first place. We learn that Becket Redfellow (Powell) is already in prison and is only hours away from being put to death for murdering his entire family. We already know what he’s done, so now the only surprise is how he did it. With seemingly illogical calm and a perpetual smirk despite his circumstances, Becket decides to give his final confession to a priest (Sean C. Michael), promising him (and us) the inside scoop on what really happened. Cue the movie-length flashback.

" How to Make a Killing is a fairly tepid affair that isn’t dark enough, funny enough, or clever enough to be anything more than a run-of-the-mill satire. "

Becket’s mother is disowned by her obscenely wealthy father (Ed Harris) and cut out of her family entirely after she becomes pregnant as a teenager and decides to keep the baby. She is determined to make it on her own as a working-class single mom in New Jersey and raises her son with as much love and culture as she can give. After she dies when Becket is still very young, the family refuses to take in or even acknowledge Becket, leaving him on his own to grow up in the foster system. Becket is constantly reflecting on his mother’s last words as he looks at a locket of her hair; he “deserves” to be wealthy and should do whatever it takes to get what “belongs” to him.

Cut to several years in the future and we see Becket living what this movie thinks is a poor life, working at an upscale New York menswear store in present-day New York. It’s a job that exists only for Becket to conveniently run into his rich childhood crush, Julia Steinway (the ubiquitous Margaret Qualley, doing some kind of strange femme-fatale routine), who “jokingly” puts the idea of killing all of his relatives into his mind, suggesting that this would not only get him the riches he wants but her love as well.

All of this inexplicably seems like a great idea to Becket, who bumbles his way through his first murder without much thought or remorse. He runs into his uncle (Bill Camp) at the funeral and gets a job at his financial firm, instantly putting him on a path towards financial stability. After offing another cousin, Becket meets and falls in love with Ruth (Jessica Henwick), a schoolteacher who is the only normal person in the movie, someone who genuinely doesn’t care about money and only wants the kind of happiness you get from a loving partnership and a job spent in service of others.

It's at this point that things really start to fall apart, as there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason for Becket to keep killing people. He’s in love, he’s skyrocketing up the ladder in his uncle’s company, and he’s just moved into a gorgeous new home. Becket’s voiceover narration briefly mentions that maybe he should have just stopped there, but he doesn’t. We hear his mother’s voice once more, reminding him that he “deserves” the family wealth. It might have been more interesting if Becket really grappled with his motivations at this point, but the movie must chug forward, reminding us that these people are ruled only by greed.

As if anticipating such a critique, Julia Steinway re-enters the scene with a blackmail scheme, basically forcing Becket to keep doing what he’s doing, despite strong suspicion from the FBI and the rest of the surviving members of the family. Since they spend so little screen time together, it’s difficult to know exactly what Becket and Julia actually think of each other. Are they still somehow in love? It seems highly unlikely. Is Julia nothing more than an idea of what Becket thinks he wants? Even that seems farfetched given Becket’s seemingly genuine love for Ruth. Why doesn’t he just kill Julia if that’s his preferred method of problem solving? We know that Becket isn’t enjoying the murders of his family (the narration tells us so), but it’s difficult to really understand what is propelling him forward other than the thematic demands of the movie.

Becket infuriatingly skips his own engagement dinner to have a final boss showdown with Ed Harris, as the family’s patriarch finally acknowledges Becket and gives him a chance to fight for his inheritance. It’s a bizarre sequence that doesn’t make a lot of sense, even if it is fun to see Harris and Powell chase each other around a mansion with crossbows. Everything comes full circle with the opening scene, and we get the movie’s final message: the rich will always get away with it without any consequences. It’s almost a subversion that can be respected for its bleak honesty, even if it doesn’t exactly feel good.

Powell doesn’t do much to impress, despite being in just about every scene of the movie. His typical smarmy confidence seems entirely out of place, as he relentlessly smirks and swaggers around despite his character spending the entire runtime completely out of his depth. He wears various baseball hats to several family functions in what seems like a misguided attempt to be incognito. Nothing about Becket feels like a real person, whose actions are often at odds with his own cooly-recited narration. It’s hard to say if another actor could’ve elevated the material, or if the material just didn’t have enough meat on the bones.

How to Make a Killing has some decent moments, mostly thanks to supporting actors like Topher Grace and Zach Woods successfully using a goofier tone that the rest of the movie sorely lacked. Things move at a brisk enough pace to hold your attention; it’s just a shame that there really isn’t anything all that interesting at the movie’s core. As awkward plot beats are haphazardly explained away and Glen Powell shuffles into the distance as the credits start to roll, it’s hard to resist the urge to shrug.