How to Make a Killing movie review: Glen Powell is too charming in homicidal dark comedy about entitlement

How are we supposed to feel about a character who is systematically murdering his relatives to get his hands on a $28 billion-dollar fortune?

How are we supposed to feel about that character when he’s played by Glen Powell, he of the bombastic charisma and toothy grin?

Does that negate or ameliorate the character’s obvious moral deficiencies?

Clearly it’s meant to, or it’s supposed to at least challenge an audience in confronting their own culpability by having their on-screen surrogate be someone so homicidal. Can that much money – as well as a dash of injustice – ever absolve you of the greatest crime, seven times over?

In that sense, How to Make a Killing is trying to play in the same sandbox as Alfred Hitchcock in manipulating the spectator to live in the head and perspective of a bad guy. Which is not to suggest that movies have to be moralistic, but there is something churn-y about your hero being so obviously villainous.

A modern remake of the 1949 British comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets in which Alec Guinness played eight different characters, itself an adaptation of a 1907 book, How to Make a Killing stars Powell as Becket Redfellow.

Becket was born to an heiress mother who had been cast out of her very wealthy family when she fell pregnant as a teenager and chose to keep the baby. She died when he was still a child but before her death, she raised him in the ways of the WASP-y rich – archery, music, all those patrician things.

She also instilled in him that he “deserved” more than what he had been given, that he was entitled to a better life.

As an adult, Becket crosses paths with a childhood chum, Julia (Margaret Qualley), who jokingly suggested that he could kill the seven people ahead of him in the family tree to claim his inheritance.

That includes three cousins, three uncles/aunts and his ruthless and reclusive grandfather (Ed Harris). The casting for the cousins are excellent with Zach Woods (Silicon Valley, The Office US) and Topher Grace playing ridiculous, scene-stealing caricatures.

You also have to give the production credit for recruiting Rafferty Law (son of Jude) as a party boy cousin whose manner of death must surely intentionally reference one of his father’s most iconic roles, as Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr Ripley.

Patricia Highsmith’s famous literary creation, later immortalised on screen by Alain Delon, Matt Damon and Andrew Scott, is an interesting comparison point because it highlights what How to Make a Killing lacks – a character you could maybe not empathise with but at least go some ways to understanding his yearning and pathology.

Powell is never not charming, and he can ingratiate his way into most situations but unlike Ripley, Becket has an easy confidence that makes it a little too easy.

The film doesn’t throw up many obstacles, whether actual or ethical. Most of his targets are ludicrous individuals whose humanity is never foregrounded, which is supposed to make it smoother for us to accept Becket’s ruthless dispatching of his relos.

In the 1949 film, the prize was a dukedom (you may have seen Kind Hearts and Coronets referenced in relation to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s position in the line of succession), and now it’s a billion-dollar fortune. But it’s the same framework that those born to it are entitled to it, no matter what.

Writer and director John Patton Ford previously made the Aubrey Plaza-starring Emily the Criminal, about a young woman’s gradual immersion in a credit card scam ring after student debt leaves her few choices. That film was a much more considered and nuanced exploration of behaviour that defies conventional morality.

But in How to Make a Killing, Becket really is just after billions of dollars he had no hand in amassing, simply because of the accidence of birth.

There could have been something quietly subversive about it, in presenting this character – a good-looking, socially put-together, white, heterosexual male – who repeatedly pursues dastardly deeds, but it struggles to reconcile what it maybe wants to say and what it actually is.

It’s difficult to compartmentalise, and it really could that Powell is just too outwardly charming – or was directed that way - for the dimensions this character needed. He is never not the anti-hero if not just the hero.

On a less thematic level, How to Make a Killing is also not as snappy, sharp or fun as its dark comedy promise, which gives you too much time to ponder all those thorny ethical quandaries.

Rating: 2.5/5

How to Make a Killing is in cinemas on Thursday, February 26