Released: 26th February
Seen: 20th June
Every few years we get a celebrity who is clearly being pitched as a leading man to the masses but, for some reason, just doesn’t seem to click. One of the more recent ones who has been undergoing this process is Glen Powell, it seemed to start around his appearance in Top Gun: Maverick and kept going with works like Hit Man, Anyone But You, Twisters (the image of him walking in the rain was almost scientifically designed to make audiences feral) and The Running Man. Each film basically just tried to give him star power, turn him into the affable, attractive leading man that anyone could root for. It’s clear that the industry wants him to be the next Tom Cruise-type but somehow they have yet to get him into a vehicle that puts him on that level. How To Make A Killing definitely wanted to be the thing that cemented him as that leading man but it flopped hard enough that it won’t be doing that, which is a shame because if it had hit it would’ve undoubtedly been the thing that made Glen into a generational star, even if the film itself isn’t great.
How To Make A Killing is a dark comedy about intra-familial homicide, centering around Becket Redfellow (Glen Powell). Becket was not a planned baby, indeed when he was born his mother was disowned by her family because she wouldn’t abort. She ended up being forced to raise Becket away from her family, who happened to be obscenely wealthy people with billions of dollars to spare. Even though she’d been disowned, Becket’s mother wasn’t disinherited, meaning that Becket would still be entitled to a several billion dollar inheritance should everyone in the Redfellow family die. Since they seem unwilling to do that on their own accord, Becket decides that the only fair thing to do is to speed up the process and take them all out so that he can get the inheritance.
How To Make A Killing likes its comedy dark and subdued, a combination that I’m not sure works well for the material. It follows a fairly simple pattern of Becket telling a priest about his life story, explaining his hardships before a quick murder of a member of the family and then a few more subdued less-than-hilarious shenanigans before the next murder. For a film about a guy who kills his entire family to get a $28 billion inheritance, it’s almost trying too hard to be tasteful about the material which takes a lot of the bite out of it. The film might want to be seen as kind of a thriller but it really isn’t, nothing about the film is suspenseful because we see basically everything and it’s hard to be in suspense when you can see every step of the murder. There are moments when you can see the twisted comedy working, the murder of a family member using dental cream is particularly amusing but also over with so quickly that you barely have time for the joke to hit before we’ve moved on.
It feels like the entire film is somehow in a rush but also taking its sweet time, characters get introduced in the same four-minute span that they get murdered in and the murder itself is never particularly amusing (except for, notably, the teeth cream one I mentioned a moment ago). We don’t get to know these characters as people, they’re blank slates that create an obstacle for Becket to have to somehow get past in order to get to his billions of dollars. They’re such non-entities that I haven’t and won’t bother naming any of them because it doesn’t really matter, they aren’t important. The only one who we get any real time with is the Grandfather, played by Ed Harris, and we only get time with him because he’s basically the final boss of the movie that has to go in order for the scheme to work.
Now this isn’t to say the film is completely without drama, the final act throws a fun twist in the mix that makes for a bit of a cheeky rug pull for the audience and there’s a core romance that’s sweet enough to provide some extra stakes to the proceedings but really that’s kind of it. It can’t even really do anything with the fact that this is about the murder of billionaires, something that should feel kind of cathartic right now considering how the public at large feel about the very concept of billionaires. You can’t really enjoy this on a guilty pleasure level because they just don’t make these people interesting enough to care about and don’t even use their deaths to say anything interesting or funny.
Indeed, the only real reason this film is as watchable as it ends up being is because of Glen Powell, who really does pour on the charm like it’s going out of style. The man’s always had an undeniable likability to him and he uses that charm brilliantly here, somehow coming across as your everyman who’s had it tough and is finally trying to take a chance and get what he deserves. Watching him start this little murder plan being so unsure and awkward about it and slowly getting smarter and more confident is actually fun, the little moments of him talking to the priest feel so natural. It’s the kind of performance that would have him hailed as the next great leading man if it was in a better film or if the film just did better at the box office. He carries the whole film on his shoulders with remarkable ease, making it at very least a watchable experience.
How To Make A Killing suffers from just being too calm and tranquil, it’s playing everything so safe while still trying to be this dark comedy about a family murder. The tone just doesn’t work and most of the cast is just there for a body count, but they can’t even be bothered to die in fun or messy ways that might make for a few shock laughs. The only reason to see this is really to see a genuinely great leading man performance, and Glen Powell’s got enough of those in better movies that you can enjoy. Not the worst thing I’ve seen, not even close, but I wouldn’t bet my life on this getting a sudden reappraisal now that it’s on streaming.
Movie Meister Reviews 