The humor and spirit of How to Make a Killing lie completely in both how the story is told and the person who tells it. Glen Powell is at his charming best as he describes how his character moves his chess pieces around a board and systematically (yet comedically) eliminates the opposing pawns, queens, and kings. Loosely based on both the 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by Roy Horniman and the first filmed adaptation Kind Hearts and Coronets from 1949, How to Make a Killing details a devious rags-to-riches plot so exaggerated that the main character would need the best of luck to pull it off.
This is comedy at its darkest, and writer/director John Patton Ford handles it with a deft touch, almost as if he were merely pointing the camera at his subjects and letting scenes play out as they will. It’s the kind of vibe that doesn’t feel forced or over-directed. Ford bounces us around a bit, framing the story as a death row confession while diving into each step Becket Redfellow (Powell) takes to honor his dying mother Mary’s (Nell Williams) final instructions: Never stop until he gets the life he deserves. And these steps he takes involve moving around a chessboard and eliminating every piece between him and the millions he stands to inherit as the bastard son of a daughter disowned from an exorbitantly wealthy family.
There’s a certain kind of Monty Pythonesque bent to how contrived Becket’s murder-riddled attempt at turning from pauper to prince seems, a vibe that also bleeds into how luck plays a large part in doing it and getting away (relatively) clean. While Ford goes headfirst into making manslaughter into man’s laughter (and not in a Clue kind of manner), there’s a sick humor in being allowed to laugh at the unfortunate ends some of Becket’s victims meet. The script lays out how Becket insinuates himself back into the Redfellow family without trying to hide who he is; he only resorts to giving a fake name once, and even that ends with the revelation that he’s related. With each forward motion, his wardrobe changes from cheap clothing to tailored suits, mirroring his own personal transformation from normal guy to the man he becomes at film’s end (even including his prison jumpsuit). The brazen forthrightness that Becket uses to disarm his marks actually works, and Powell uses every ounce of his aw-shucks, just-a-normal-guy appeal to approach the people he needs to put in the ground.
Here’s the thing: This never feels like a revenge mission, which leads to the question of Becket’s humanity. Are we watching a psychopath, a sociopath, or someone just at the end of his rope who thinks this is the only way forward? The answer: all of the above. Because of the tone Ford asks Powell to strike as Becket, we’re never sure if we’re looking at him as a hero or a villain; we only know that he’s in the Now, and he has to do what he needs to for his own ends. Also, it’s not like the Redfellow family is entirely nose-in-the-air types with punchable faces; while most of them are people you wouldn’t mind seeing put into the family mausoleum (the smash cuts to shots of this exact thing happening bring out a lot of laughs), there’s at least one who takes to Becket kindly. However, this comes with a serious caveat, as his benevolent uncle Warren (Bill Camp) puts him in a position to get even closer to the family by hiring him at his prestigious investment firm.
Countering Becket are two love interests: his friend from childhood, Julia (Margaret Qualley), and Ruth (Jessica Henwick), the latter of whom suddenly finds herself single after her boyfriend—also a Redfellow—falls prey to one of Becket’s precisely laid traps. Ruth is a genuinely good-hearted person, probably one of the few in the entire film; her attraction to and eventual relationship with Becket allows us to see a different, more human side of him. But it’s socialite Julia, a tempest in a teapot, who could possibly be his undoing, reentering his life after Mary’s death forced him into the foster system as a child. Flirtatious and conniving, Julia’s the devil on his shoulder (opposite Ruth’s angel), using her wayward husband’s financial situation to provoke Becket into making a wrong move.
The trio of Glen Powell, Jessica Henwick, and Margaret Qualley excel in their roles, forming not a love triangle, but the solid foundation upon which How to Make a Killing builds to its climax. Powell uses his trademark grin and good looks to dupe us into following him down his merry path of murder most foul, and we meet him with little resistance, as he’s warm, welcoming, self-deprecating, and endlessly charming. It’s hard not to fall in line with him, as Ruth finds out. Played by Henwick with lovely guilelessness, Ruth isn’t a hard person to decipher; she represents Becket’s innocence and optimism taken away by Mary’s disownment and death. Opposite, Julia pulls Becket more toward hedonism, fairly throwing herself at him to get him to compromise and capitulate to her wants. This film is a battle for his soul, but how much of a soul does he really have if he holds no compunctions regarding the offing of his blood relatives?
It’s not a question of storytelling; John Patton Ford clearly makes the film live in this ambiguity to make us question our own beliefs. As Becket says in the early goings, “This story is a tragedy,” but it’s unclear what the tragedy is. Is it the loss of his humanity? Is it all the people he had to kill? Is it Redfellow family patriarch Whitelaw (Ed Harris) cutting his mother off, thereby dooming Becket to poverty? Even when Becket’s sly narration concludes and gives us the final note that sends us off to ponder what we’ve just witnessed, we’re still unsure of how to take How to Make a Killing. It’s explicitly designed and executed to make us uncomfortable with both the film’s and Becket’s truth, and Ford’s ability to hold us in that space for the film’s running time is a singular and delicious feat, with Glen Powell’s effervescence tying everything together.
