‘How To Make a Killing’ is Dead on Arrival

There’s a relatively new cinematic genre I’ve taken to call ‘cincomprehensible.’ It applies to the type of movie that might have held its own in the past but in an era when streaming is so prevalent and audience propensity to take a chance on most movies out there seemingly so low, giving a wide release for a substandard, low-key studio movie ends up being a supreme exercise in filmmaking futility.Last week’s ‘cincomprehensible’ offering was heist movie “Crime 101.” This week’s is “How to Make a Killing”, a loose remake of the 1949 Ealing comedy classic “Kind Hearts and Coronets”, itself based on the 1907 novel “Israel Rank,” by Roy Horniman. Glen Powell — still being held up by some as a sharp Young Hollywood blade, even though, at 37-years-old, he is older than both Mozart and Modigliani when they died— plays antihero Becket Redfellow.We first meet Becket on death row hours away from execution, unspooling his story to a priest who has arrived to hear his confession for the multiple murder of his family members. Disowned at birth by his wealthy Long Island family after his mother Mary (Nell Williams) sires him out of wedlock and refuses her billionaire grandfather’s request for her to have an abortion, Becket learns his family’s irrevocable trust laws means he will inherit $28 billion, but only once the seven heirs older than him have died. Fuelled by class bitterness over his ancestral treatment, Becket schemes to murder his family members so he can grab the riches.Becket starts out as a tailor before landing a job at the family investment firm run by his uncle Warren (played by an inert Bill Camp). Quite why a young Wall Street high flyer, who isn’t called Patrick Bateman, would need resort to a murder spree to get his hands on some money is only one of the questions “How to Make a Killing” fails to satisfactorily answer. Another one is how did the film’s writer-director John Patton Ford, who made such a pulsating study of economic desperation with “Emily the Criminal” in 2022 wind up making such a desperately derivative follow-up?With his chiseled jawline and concentrated frown, Mr. Powell resembles in this film the mid-20th century Lithunian-born British actor Laurence Harvey (coincidentally both actors starred in films called “The Running Man.”) But while Harvey excelled as a vulgar social climber on the make in 1959 classic “Room at the Top”, Mr. Powell, for all his arresting visual sleekness, cannot do much with a script that resembles the results of a second-rate AI chatbot being asked to combine “Saltburn” with “Saturday Night Live.”The redeeming feature of “How to Make a Killing” lies in its supporting cast, particularly Zach Woods playing Becket’s Brooklyn-dwelling artist cousin Noah. A self-described “white Basquiat”, we know Mr. Woods’s death is coming but not before he has momentarily brought the film to life with fine comedic moments.Margaret Qualley is sprightly as Becket’s childhood crush Julia Steinway, but her vampish femme fatale is straight out of a caper movie while Jessica Henwick, as Ruth, Becket’s girlfriend, delivers a solid performance but to add to the tonal confiusion, her scenes are straight out of a relationship drama.Another one of Becket’s victims, his finance “bro” cousin Taylor, is played by Raff Law, the son of actor Jude Law, who landed a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination in 2000 for his brilliant supporting turn as Dickie Greeneleaf in an infinitely superior class misfit film, “The Talented Mr Ripley.” As with Dickie Greenleaf in “….Ripley”, Taylor dies on a boat, which given Mr. Law’s real-life lineage, perhaps amounts to an even graver cinematic family crime than all the murders Becket commits in the film.“How to Make a Killing” is being distributed by the celebrated independent film company A24 which has just scored its biggest hit with a much better film about an unscrupulous hustler on-the-make, “Marty Supreme.” This film contains the gory deaths and quirky supporting turns that are the hallmarks of many an A24 film but none of the originality or depth usually found in their pictures.It’s hard to envisage that when the box office grosses arrive a few days time, the title of this film won’t end up being rendered ironic. Unkind observers would state that A24 could well be forgiven for doing with this cinematic corpse what Becket’s family does to him at the beginning of “How to Make a Killing” — cutting ties and denying kinship.

‘How To Make a Killing’ is Dead on Arrival

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