Glen Powell stars in How to Make a Killing as Becket Redfellow, the disowned heir of an obscenely wealthy family, who decides to speed up his inheritance by murdering his way through the family bloodline one relative at a time. Writer-director John Patton Ford (Emily the Criminal) loosely adapts the 1949 British black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, transplanting the story from Edwardian England to contemporary New York.
The film opens with Becket eating his last meal and gradually telling his life story to a priest in one long death row confession. The movie spans the four hours before Becket’s execution as he relates his tale of familial vengeance, from his childhood to his downfall.
Becket was banished from the Redfellow fortune before birth, when his pregnant teenage mother was cast out by her cold, controlling father, a billionaire patriarch named Whitelaw Redfellow (Ed Harris). Raised in working-class New Jersey, Becket grows up resentful and broke while his extended family lives in comfort. When his mother gets sick, he reaches out to his relatives for assistance, but he’s turned away outside the gates of his grandfather’s mansion. After she dies, Becket decides to claim what he believes is rightfully his, methodically eliminating the relatives standing between him and a $28 billion inheritance. Along the way, he reconnects with his childhood crush Julia (Margaret Qualley). The fact that she’s now engaged to one of Becket’s targets complicates his plans in more ways than one.
The film boasts a notable supporting cast, including Bill Camp as Becket’s kind-hearted Uncle Warren, alongside Jessica Henwick, Topher Grace and Zach Woods. But like Becket Redfellow himself, Ford’s movie has an identity crisis of its own. It’s funny, but not really funny enough to be considered a comedy. It never wants to abandon realism and go for the full zaniness required to reach Knives Out territory. That said, it’s not dramatic enough to take too seriously either. There’s real family pain here and crushing class tensions, but the stakes never seem very high. Every murder comes relatively easily, and the repetitive funeral scenes read like punchlines. They’re supposed to be punchlines, but they don’t really land. If this is a comedy, why is there real family pain and crushing class tensions weighing it down? They’re not very funny.
The romantic story between Qualley and Powell’s characters is paper-thin and feels most meaningful as a plot device that helps bring the story to an unsatisfying happy ending. Qualley brings genuine magnetism to Julia, but the script never decides whether she’s a co-conspirator, a moral compass, or simply a prize waiting to be won. She ends up being a little of all three and not quite enough of any of them. She ultimately comes off as sexy but manipulative and two-faced, and audiences who might otherwise empathize with Becket’s journey don’t want him to end up with this toxic debutante.
Powell, to his credit, plays a little against type, coming off more as a hungry underdog rather than his usual charismatic leading-man roles. That said, the film feels like a missed opportunity for this talented cast to explore something closer to the gangbusters comedy of Kind Hearts and Coronets, which is still widely regarded as one of the greatest British comedies of all time. We rarely understand what’s actually driving Becket beyond generic class resentment and a vague deathbed promise to his mother, and, again, these aren’t exactly comedy gold.
How to Make a Killing aims at class commentary, satire and genuine pathos without pulling the trigger on any of them. The result is a film that’s never quite bad enough to dismiss, but never quite good enough to recommend with much enthusiasm either.
How to Make a Killing is streaming on HBO Max.
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.