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This is another in Cinema Romantico’s non-existent sporadic series of reviews of movies watched on planes.
John Patton Ford’s “How to Make a Killing” was based on the 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal, as was the 1949 film “Kind Hearts and Coronets” in which Sir Alec Guinness played eight roles, all members of a wealthy family that a distant relative murders one-by-one to claim dukedom. The loose remake, then, would seem tailor-made for its star Glen Powell to follow in Guinness’s footsteps given that he convincingly played multiple roles in 2023’s “Hit Man.” Instead, Powell takes one role, starring as Beckett Redfellow, son of a teenage mother (Nell Williams) exiled from her affluent family for deigning to keep her baby and risk bringing shame to the family name. Despite her banishment, however, Beckett’s surname remains intact, and when his mom stresses that he should lead the life he deserves, he eventually takes that to mean murdering all his relatives in line for the massive Redfellow inheritance so he can claim it for his own. He is spurred to drastic action not only by his mother but by Julia Steinway (Margaret Qualley), his old childhood friend and “How to Make a Killing’s” resident femme fatale, in a sense laying a piece of Pule cheese at the end of an elaborate maze that Beckett cannot resist. And though Powell is only technically playing one part, in another sense, he assumes multiple personalities in so far as Ford’s screenplay requires him to cycle through different ones as the complicated plot plays out. Those personalities, alas, come across more like a matter of narrative convenience than they do a complicated sense of self, creating a fatal emotionally muddled tone.
The story is framed as Beckett’s confession to a priest (Adrian Lukis) while awaiting his execution on death row in a few hours. Here, Powell deftly turns his own movie star features against themselves to fully inhabit the air of a charming psychopath. Problem is, in the flashback scenes, as Beckett hesitantly wades into his run of murders, egged on by Julia, the character and subsequently the performance feel altogether different, less psychotic than lucid. This is epitomized in how Beckett falls in love with Ruth (Jessica Henwick), girlfriend of his obnoxious cousin Noah (Zach Woods). Though the narrative speeds through their courtship, the chemistry that Powell and Henwick have is real, but overall, their genuine warmth never squares with the cold, calculating individual narrating the story. As the murders pile up and his choices close in on him, it’s as if “How to Make a Killing” wants to portray Beckett as a noir sap gradually ensnared in a web of his own deceit and lies even as the Beckett narrating the story suggests just the opposite. Ford’s camera, meanwhile, might salivate over Qualley, but Powell never does, never quite sure if he is supposed to, evocative of how his performance is compromised by the writing and direction as everything culminates in a scene that cannot decide between comedy and tragedy, a would-be punch to the face that whiffs.
