On Screen: “How to Make a Killing”
How to Make a Killing
In reviewing “How to Make a Killing,” I have to inquire: Have you ever seen a delectable British black comedy called “King Hearts and Coronets?” Probably not.
Released in 1949, it starred Alec Guinness as the debonair son of a woman disowned by her aristocratic family for marrying below her social class. After she dies, he decides to acquire his rightful inheritance by murdering the eight relatives ahead of him in the line of succession — with Guinness playing all of them!
Insipidly written and blandly directed by John Patton Ford, “How to Make a Killing” re-imagines that rudimentary concept, introducing Becket Redfellow (Glen Powell) as the disowned grandson of uber-wealthy Whitlaw Redfellow (Ed Harris).
Much to his chagrin, genial Becket grew up poor in Belleville, New Jersey — at least that’s what he tells the prison priest in a death row conversation, four hours before his scheduled execution for murder.
Cue the flashbacks …
Propelled by his mother’s urging to get “the right kind of life,” Becket realizes that the only way he can retrieve the family fortune is to kill his way up the family tree.
That includes a Wall Street financier (Raff Law, son of Jude), an unconventional artist (Zach Woods), a corrupt megachurch preacher (Toper Grace), and a kindly uncle (Bill Camp), who fortuitously dies of a heart attack.
Meanwhile, since childhood, he’s had a crush on an ‘unattainable’ rich girl, Julia (Margaret Qualley, daughter of Andie MacDowell), with her own avaricious agenda.
After his star-making role in “Top Gun: Maverick,” followed by “Hit Man,” “Twisters,” and “The Running Man,” I suspect this is a misfire Glen Powell will bury deep in his resume.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “How to Make a Killing” is a flaccid, forgettable 5, streaming on Prime Video.
Susan Granger is a product of Hollywood. Her natural father, S. Sylvan Simon, was a director and producer at M.G.M. and Columbia Pictures. Her adoptive father, Armand Deutsch, produced movies at M.G.M.
As a child, Susan appeared in movies with Abbott & Costello, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Margaret O’Brien, and Lassie. She attended Mills College in California, studying journalism with Pierre Salinger, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism.