Writer/director John Patton Ford's 2022 feature debut Emily the Criminal proved one of the more interesting crime thrillers of recent years. In that movie, Aubrey Plaza gave a career best performance as a struggling young woman who desperately turns to crime only to discover she has a knack for it. Ford's second movie, How to Make a Killing, features a similar anti-hero, but here the crime is murder.
It's loosely inspired by Roy Horniman's 1907 novel 'Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal', which was famously adapted as the 1947 Ealing comedy classic Kind Hearts and Coronets. The setting has been switched to modern day New York, but Ford's film plays like reheated leftovers, lacking the comedy of the Ealing version and never convincing as a thriller.
Kind Hearts and Coronets famously cast Alec Guinness in eight roles, the members of an aristocratic clan bumped off one by one by a disowned relative desperate to ensure he inherits the family fortune. Ford doesn't carry over that gimmick, but he aims for a blackly comic tone that never quite lands. Glen Powell is forced to dial his charm up to 11 to carry the film, and the supporting cast is impressively assembled, but the storytelling is of the "and then this happened" variety, and it's a struggle to care about whether our protagonist succeeds in his goal.
That protagonist is Powell's Becket Redfellow, whom we meet on death row with just a few hours left before he's executed. In one of the oldest clichés in the book, Becket recounts his story to a prison chaplain (Adrian Lukis). Becket's mother was cast out from the wealthy and powerful Redfellow family when she became pregnant out of wedlock and forced to raise her son alone before dying at a young age. Becket discovers that he is still in the line of succession, but there are multiple family members standing in the way of his inheritance. Turning to murder, Becket removes each of these obnoxious obstacles to his fortune.
How to Make a Killing isn't witty enough to succeed as a comedy. Becket's victims are a collection of broadly drawn douchebags - finance bro, televangelist, a loft-dwelling bohemian who fancies himself "the white Basquiat" etc - but only Topher Grace as the conman pastor makes his character stand out. Powell is very much the straight man here, but the Redfellows aren't interestingly eccentric enough for him to successfully play off.
Ford's film also fails to grip us as a thriller, as everything goes off too easily for Becket. The threat of a femme fatale played by Margaret Qualley and her legs is introduced far too late in the drama to have the required impact, and a pair of inconsequential FBI investigators do nothing to convince us that Becket has anything to worry about. We never see how Becket plans his executions, so some of the murders leave us asking questions regarding the improbability of his being able to pull them off. It's only when Becket faces off with Ed Harris's final boss head of the family that he finds himself in any danger.
The film's most engaging subplot concerns Becket's burgeoning romance with Ruth (Jessica Henwick), the girlfriend of one of his dead relatives. Powell and Henwick have tingling chemistry, and their first kiss is the sort of old school moment of raw passion you rarely see in today's asexual mainstream cinema. Ruth is established as Becket's moral conscience, but the movie sidelines her to the point where she becomes an afterthought, which greatly lessens the intended impact of its classic noir denouement.
Directed by: John Patton Ford
Starring: Glen Powell, Margaret Qualley, Jessica Henwick, Bill Camp, Zach Woods, Topher Grace, Ed Harris
