Synopsis: Disowned at birth by his obscenely wealthy family, blue-collar Becket Redfellow will stop at nothing to reclaim his inheritance, no matter how many relatives stand in his way.
Stars: Glen Powell, Margaret Qualley, Jessica Henwick, Bill Camp, Zach Woods, Topher Grace, Ed Harris
Director: John Patton Ford
Rated: R
Running Length: 105 minutes
Movie Review in Brief: Glen Powell is back in his lane in A24’s How to Make a Killing, a sleek and entertaining black comedy that’s smart enough to know what it is — and just restrained enough to never quite become what it could be.
Review:
Glen Powell’s career reads like a highlight reel with a few costly detours. Top Gun: Maverick made him a name. Anyone But You made him a star. Hit Man made us wonder if something bigger was forming. Then The Running Man reminded us how badly a wrong turn stings. How to Make a Killing, A24’s black comedy thriller opening February 20, is a recalibration — Powell back in territory that genuinely suits him, playing a character who commits increasingly unconscionable acts while remaining, somehow, the most likable person in any given room.
The script has deep roots. Director John Patton Ford loosely adapted from Robert Hamer’s Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), itself drawn from Roy Horniman’s 1907 novel “Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal,” the same source behind the Tony-winning musical “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder.” That’s a distinguished lineage. The film earns points for the company it keeps without quite living up to all of it.
Becket Redfellow (Powell) was written out of his family before he took his first breath. Raised in working-class New Jersey by a mother who spent her final words urging him to take what’s his, he schemes his way through a gauntlet of entitled heirs standing between him and a Long Island estate he’s convinced belongs to him. The premise is a natural fit for jet-black comedy. But Ford, despite the bruised-eye precision of his debut Emily the Criminal, keeps pulling his punches. The murders happen at a tasteful remove. For a film with this logline and an R rating, How to Make a Killing is, oddly, quaint.
There’s also a logic problem that deflates the stakes. Becket is ambitious and aggrieved, but not desperate — he has a roof over his head and food on the table. If the inheritance chase is about more than money, we needed to feel that hunger more urgently, and the film never quite makes us. It also raises a question nobody addresses: this family tree is enormous, so where are all the women? Someone had to have given birth to these people.
The supporting cast does what it can. Julia (Margaret Qualley, The Substance), Becket’s childhood crush turned calculating adult complication, gives Qualley another slippery character to inhabit. She does it well, maybe too effortlessly — the longer the film insists we should be riveted by her, the less riveted we become. Topher Grace (Heretic) as megachurch cousin Pastor Steven, Zach Woods (Spin Me Round) as hapless artistic heir Noah Redfellow, and Rafferty Law as finance bro Taylor Redfellow each get their brief spotlight before the inevitable, though a ho-hum predictability robs the eliminations of real tension.
Bill Camp (Presumed Innocent) as Uncle Warren is the film’s best surprise, navigating both sides of the moral ledger with unshowy precision. Ed Harris (Love Lies Bleeding) holds court as patriarch Whitelaw — reliable, menacing, and not noticeably straining himself. Jessica Henwick (Cuckoo) gets the least gratifying role as Ruth, Becket’s almost-inherited girlfriend, though that’s the script’s failure, not hers.
Technically, it’s handsome. Todd Banhazl’s cinematography handles both worlds — blue-collar grit and old-money excess — with clean visual contrast and a Gothic warmth to the Redfellow estate. Jo Katsaras’ costuming does real narrative work, tracking Becket’s rise in real time through his escalating wardrobe. Emile Mosseri’s score has a dry wit baked in, and the closing song selection is a genuine earworm ambush.
At 105 minutes, How to Make a Killing has the social grace not to overstay. Powell is engaging and clearly in his element, this film a reminder that his charisma works best when the material lets him be both charming and faintly dangerous. It doesn’t deliver the razor-sharp, morally corrosive comedy its premise promises. But in the awkward no-man’s-land between awards season and summer, it cuts well enough.
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