There’s solid, if soulless, on-paper thinking behind the existence of How to Make a Killing, decisions one can imagine getting some enthused whoops inside of an LA conference room. We have IP (beloved Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets), a Black List script (originally titled Rothchild back in 2014), a man-of-the-moment lead (the ubiquitous Glen Powell), a woman-of-the-moment co-star (the equally ubiquitous Margaret Qualley), an of-the-moment trend (eat the rich), an indie company turned merch-able brand (A24) and a film-maker who recently broke out with a buzzed-about debut (Emily the Criminal’s John Patton Ford). If ChatGPT were to create an AI service for studio execs, this would be an obvious green light.
But when dragged into the real world, of discernment and taste, it’s a package that brings up a string of concerning questions. Can Powell pull off burgeoning murderous psychopath? Is it time to stop relying on the Black List as a taste test for quality? Has eat the rich fatigue set in? And, most importantly, why on earth would one try to remake a close-to-perfect classic?
At the end of 110 minutes, I can provide the answers: no, yes, 100% and I really have no idea.
I had plenty of thinking time at least, given how utterly tepid the whole thing is, an experience akin to watching someone try to light a match when the entire box is wet. Ford wants this to be snappy and stylish, and while it certainly has the feel of prestige pop (apart from Cape Town making for an unconvincing New York stand-in), there’s no spark here, no breath that hasn’t been stolen from elsewhere.
The 1949 original, one of the most deliciously black-hearted comedies ever made, is both very much of its time (including the jarring usage of a racist nursery rhyme) and timeless in its plotting. The story, of an unfairly cast out man killing his way up the family tree to get his inheritance, remains as darkly alluring as it ever was, a captivating game of push-pull as our protagonist descends from a place of sympathy to a position of monstrosity. Reports had suggested the redo was “inspired” by the original but this is a clearcut remake, many of the beats remaining almost identical, just effortfully pulled into a new era.
Louis is now Becket, whose mother rejected her wealthy family’s insistent suggestion of an abortion after she found herself young, unmarried and pregnant. She’s pushed out of their cushioned luxury (all the way to New Jersey) to become a struggling single mother but when she dies years later, Becket becomes a young orphan, forced into the foster system. Yet more years later, unhappily toiling away as a low-paid retail worker, he hatches a plan to get what’s rightfully his.
The route to the top of the food chain is similar but with some modern tweaks – the rowboat has become a yacht, the village photographer an insufferable Brooklyn artist, the reverend a flashy celeb-preacher – but the edges have all been smoothed. There’s nothing here that comes close to the sour nastiness of Louis’s glee over diphtheria killing twin infants in the infinitely icier original (plus the mother as a bonus) with Ford making Becket’s victims all more obviously awful and deserving of whatever violence comes their way (it’s perhaps wise that no one tried to repeat Alec Guinness’s astonishing gambit of taking on all eight victims, instead they’re played by actors including Topher Grace and a scene-devouring Ed Harris).
Powell, with his exaggerated comic book attributes, plays the character like a Disney-fied Patrick Bateman, completely lacking in any real darkness, smooth rather than slippery, swapping acid for snark (his delivery is increasingly in danger of dipping into dreaded Ryan Reynolds territory). As his childhood friend turned adult foe, Qualley certainly has more bite (one can see her swiftly dispatching Powell in a knife fight) but there’s no chemistry and no serious stakes to his relationship with Jessica Henwick’s increasingly suspicious hipster.
Ford is far too keen for us to side with Becket, portrayed as a man just trying to stay afloat in a sea filled with snakes, and so whatever interest we might have had in watching someone gleefully discover their psychopathic knack for murder is evaporated (Ford managed Aubrey Plaza’s criminal discovery far better in his previous film, in fact Plaza would have made a far more suitable lead here). Updating a story such as this, with the original set at the start of the 1900s, means that whatever tricks Louis might have used back then would mostly be impossible now, with DNA and security cameras, and Ford falls over himself trying to awkwardly explain things away, turning an elegant crime caper into something far clumsier. There’s also no real satire here either (moneyed folk are apparently bad, did you realise?) and at this stage of the rich-eating cycle, I just want it to be over. Forget a killing, Ford has made a real mess instead.
