{"id":471192,"date":"2026-03-12T09:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T09:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/471192\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T09:23:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T09:23:11","slug":"how-to-make-a-killing-review-glen-powell-disappoints-in-this-limp-eat-the-rich-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/471192\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Make a Killing review \u2013 Glen Powell disappoints in this limp \u2018eat the rich\u2019 comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There\u2019s some deception at work in How to Make a Killing. And, no, it\u2019s not the string of murders committed by Glen Powell<\/a>\u2019s Becket Redfellow in order to trim his family tree and secure a generous inheritance. It\u2019s the fact that writer-director John Patton Ford\u2019s film has been presented to us as \u201cinspired by\u201d the classic 1949 Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, itself adapted from a 1907 novel.<\/p>\n

\u201cInspired by\u201d hardly covers it. How to Make a Killing is a conventional remake, replicating many of its characters and narrative beats, while failing to capture any of its frosty charm \u2013 or the trick of having Alec Guinness play eight different characters<\/a>. Both director and star have shied away from the thrilling moral apathy of the original film\u2019s antihero, played by Dennis Price, who declares it a stroke of good luck that two infant relatives of his have been struck down by diphtheria, while happily toying with the affections of two women. If Price ever does crack a smile, it\u2019s unnaturally pinned at both sides by disdain.<\/p>\n

Of course, the public mood changes, and we\u2019re now deep in the era of \u201ceat the rich\u201d narratives<\/a>, so Ford attempts to sprinkle in a little moral righteousness into his version. But Becket\u2019s no Robin Hood \u2013 he\u2019s a man who kills bad rich people so he himself can become a bad rich person, and the film, in turn, struggles to place him anywhere concrete on the moral spectrum. Was he always a stinker? Or did the pursuit of wealth corrupt him? How to Make a Killing is too timid to either defend his actions or to render him genuinely unlikeable, leaving Becket as nothing but a formless pile of dough.<\/p>\n

His mother, we\u2019re told, was a Long Island heiress exiled by her father (Ed Harris) after an unplanned pregnancy. She was left to die young and unsupported, with a whispered final wish for her son: may he live \u201cthe right kind of life\u201d. Becket\u2019s been raised to pass as an upper cruster, skilled in archery with a crush on a local socialite, Julia Steinway (Margaret Qualley<\/a>). She won\u2019t marry him, of course. But knowing the Redfellow fortune always passes down to the eldest child means she\u2019ll leave him with a curt, \u201ccall me when you\u2019ve killed them all\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"GlenGlen Powell in \u2018How to Make a Killing\u2019 (StudioCanal)<\/p>\n

Qualley plays Julia with the same repressed mania that gave The Substance\u2019s Sue her intoxicating edge. It instantly makes her the most interesting presence in the film, while suggesting she\u2019s accidentally stumbled in as one of her characters from Ethan Coen\u2019s sillier, funnier queer comedies Drive-Away Dolls (2024) or Honey Don\u2019t! (2025). Powell, you\u2019d hope, would lend a similar energy to Becket, as he works his way through a series of 1% archetypes \u2013 among them Raff Law playing tribute to his father\u2019s role in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999); Zach Woods as a self-proclaimed \u201cwhite Basquiat\u201d; and Topher Grace as an unhinged megachurch preacher.<\/p>\n

But Powell\u2019s too reserved here to be effective. And Ford only further waters down his protagonist by pitting Julia against Jessica Henwick\u2019s Ruth, a stand-in for authenticity, who has picked job satisfaction and a full personal life over material comforts. Soon, it all starts to feel like one of those sentimental family comedies from the Nineties, only with a substantially higher body count. For a film that opens with the declaration, \u201cMoney does by happiness. We\u2019re all adults here\u201d, How to Make a Killing still ends up filing its teeth down to nubs.<\/p>\n

Dir: John Patton Ford. Starring: Glen Powell, Margaret Qualley, Jessica Henwick, Bill Camp, Zach Woods, Topher Grace, Ed Harris. Cert 15, 105 minutes.<\/p>\n

\u2018How to Make a Killing\u2019 is in cinemas from 13 March<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-471192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}