‘How to Make a Killing’ should have been so much better
The cast and premise are strong, but the script could have used a lot more of an edge.
How to Make a Killing has all the elements that could theoretically make it an all-timer of a film. It’s got a dynamite premise, a literary pedigree, sexy performances from ascendant movie stars Glen Powell and Margaret Qualley, and a director, John Patton Ford, who made a well-received feature debut a few years back with Emily the Criminal, the type of promising debut that often leads to an even better sophomore effort.
There’s a lot to like here, but ultimately, How to Make a Killing doesn’t quite get there. And the problem is the writing; It should have been a lot sharper and nastier. There have been lots of comparisons to American Psycho, another movie about a suave spree killer, but it’s nowhere near as audacious as that film.
Powell plays Becket Redfellow, the black sheep of a Long Island WASP family with a billion-dollar fortune. His since-deceased mother had gotten pregnant as a teenager, leading her (and her son) to be disowned by the family, causing Becket to grow up in an unglamorous part of Northern New Jersey.
Brought up by his mother to have an aristocratic bearing despite their relative poverty, Becket comes to a realization: If several relatives ahead of him in line should meet untimely ends, he’ll end up inheriting the fortune. And if there’s something he can do to speed that along – through a series of perfect murders — all the better. If you’re a fan of the repeated “smash cut to a funeral” visual trope, as I am, there’s a lot of that here.
Qualley plays Julia, a rich-girl childhood friend and proverbial one-who-got-away who emerges as a femme fatale, as the director and his wardrobe team find creative ways to ostentatiously showcase the actress’s legs every time she’s on screen. Becket, meanwhile, gets into a sweet romance with a fashion girly, played by the always-appealing Jessica Henwick.
Eventually, Becket gets brought into the Duke and Duke-style family financial firm, gets a nice apartment and girlfriend, and seems to have achieved success. But as he explains to a priest, in a framing device that’s more trouble than it’s worth, the murders must continue. (The framing device is one of multiple things the film seems to lift from the Coens’ The Man Who Wasn’t There.)
The various doomed relatives are portrayed as grotesque, unsympathetic figures, including Zach Woods as a Brooklyn art bro and Topher Grace as a televangelist/scammer.
The role allows Powell to do some of what he did in his best starring role to date, Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, including trying on different personas and even, in some cases, disguises. He isn’t the problem.
The issue with How to Make a Killing is that the screenplay should have cut deeper. There aren’t many laughs, and if the film is trying to be a sharp satire, it doesn’t deliver. Especially since we’ve had so much popular culture lately, led by the TV series Succession and Industry, set in the world of extreme wealth, and of striving interlopers trying to penetrate that world. Those shows are marked by great writing, both in terms of dialogue and structure, and this film can’t come close to matching that.
Take the Topher Grace character. There was a whole multi-season HBO series, The Righteous Gemstones, that devoted itself to mocking people like Grace’s character — a Prosperity Gospel-type grifter — while still depicting them as human beings. This film’s version of that is a mere cartoon character.
I think I know what the problem is.
The film is based on Roy Horniman’s 19th-century novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal, which was later adapted into the 1949 British film Kind Hearts and Coronets. This is a story, alas, that makes a lot more sense within the confines of the British class system.
Indeed, so many of the recent films and TV shows about a striver going up against the upper classes and winning — whether Succession, Industry, or Saltburn — have had something in common: British writers. John Patton Ford, alas, is from South Carolina.
The other big issue is that glaring plot holes quickly start adding up: It would very soon be glaringly obvious, to anyone who isn’t five years old, that Becket is the culprit. If the plot of this movie happened in real life, Becket would be famous, and the general publlic or the press would easily figure out what was happening.
Has this family never heard of estate lawyers or wills? I realize they need a line of dialogue to close a different plot hole, but it’s highly unlikely a capital murder case would result from someone crossing the New York/New Jersey state line. And a third-act confrontation with the grandfather character (Ed Harris) makes little sense.
I’m still very much on board the Glen Powell, Leading Man train. But How to Make a Killing is a missed opportunity.
"The film is based on Roy Horniman’s 19th-century novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal, which was later adapted into the 1949 British film Kind Hearts and Coronets. "
KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS also had a pre-knighthood Alec Guinness as all the odious relatives (back when he was Ealing's main Utility Infielder, ahead of Peter Sellers), which made it fun to watch.
And, hey! None of the production stills available show off Margaret Qualley's lovely legs (as shown to marvelous advantage in THE SUBTANCE), which leads me to believe that whoever's running Publicity is not a Leg Man...or Leg Woman.... 😇