Becket Redfellow (Glen Powell) is haunted by a promise to his dying mother, Mary (Nell Williams): to not quit until he has “the right kind of life.” Which, as Becket interprets it, means a life including piano recitals, archery lessons, and the systematic slaughter of a family dynasty worth billions.
“What would you even do with a billion dollars?” wonders Ruth (Jessica Henwick) in “How to Make a Killing,” John Patton Ford’s adaptation of Roy Horniman’s 1907 novel “Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal.” Becket never musters a meaningful answer; all he knows is that he wants a billion dollars and that he’s supposed to want a billion dollars (is there a difference?).
A living wage would have been more than enough for Emily (Aubrey Plaza), the endearingly ruthless heroine of Patton Ford’s previous film, “Emily the Criminal” (2022). Yet while Emily endured in the real world, Becket inhabits a knowingly cinematic landscape, peppered with the mythic piety of Francis Ford Coppola and the spiritual torment of Martin Scorsese.
“You don’t make up for your sins in church,” Scorsese preached in the prologue to “Mean Streets” (1973). True to that sly scrap of wisdom, “How to Make a Killing” begins with Becket in prison, confessing to Father Morris (the amusingly cast Adrian Lukis, best known as the dastardly George Wickham in 1995’s “Pride and Prejudice”).
“We’re all adults here,” Becket tells Father Morris, insisting—contrary to what you may have heard from Sunday school teachers and Vermont’s most famous mitten-wearer—that happiness is quite purchasable. It’s a paradigm born of a dangerous combination: to lack wealth, yet feel deeply entitled to it.
Becket’s aura of entitlement has been painstakingly nurtured by Mary. (A mother named Mary? Hmm.) Exiled from the Redfellow estate as a pregnant teen, she could have easily been radicalized against the one percent, but instead became obsessed with the family fortune hoarded by her father, Whitelaw. (An angry old Caucasian named Whitelaw? Double hmm.)
Shrouded in shadow, Whitelaw looms over the film from a voluminous armchair, lounging like Vito Corleone (although the former, embodied with barbaric refinement by Ed Harris, represents an earthier form of evil than Marlon Brando’s godlike don). He’s the final boss in Becket’s battle with the Redfellow heirs, played with hate-me-please relish by the likes of Raff Law, Zach Woods, and Topher Grace.
“Been working your way up the financial ladder,” Whitelaw growls at Becket. “Filthy business, though.” And the filthier the business becomes, the more our rooting interest in Becket grows, egged on by the repugnance of his victims (particularly Grace’s pompadoured, hard-rockin’ pastor).
As Becket drowns, poisons, and incinerates the competition, you may wince at how easy it is to buy into his lethal quest. Therein lies the power of the Powell Maneuver, which the actor perfected in “Hit Man” (2023): confront the macabre with a bouncy enthusiasm that lures the audience to the ethical point of no return.
That’s exactly where Becket goes in the final act of “How to Make a Killing,” forsaking his status as the moral midpoint between two archetypal women: Ruth, his angelic girlfriend, and Julia (Margaret Qualley), a childhood acquaintance who delights in tearing off his mask of affable innocence.
“I wonder who’s next,” Julia muses menacingly as the Redfellow mausoleum begins to overflow with corpses. “If I were you, I might be nervous.” Forged in the furnace of generational wealth, Julia is Becket inverted: a woman who ferociously clings to her money because she lives in terror of a life without it.
As manifestations of sin and saintliness, Qualley and Henwick are almost too perfectly cast (Qualley played a gleeful dominatrix in “Sanctuary”; Henwick was the punkish savior Bugs in “The Matrix Resurrections”). It’s a tidy arrangement that illuminates Patton Ford’s not-quite-nihilistic perspective: He’s cynical enough to believe that Becket can get away with murder, but idealistic enough to believe that he had a choice.
If you think the outcome of that choice is obvious, just watch and wait. By the final scene (set to “Take Me Back to Piauí,” Juca Chaves’ jaunty 1972 swipe at Brazil’s military dictatorship), the film grants Becket a victory lap, but under circumstances so emasculating that part of him may wish he was back in his cell, regaling Father Morris with tales of his scandalous deeds.
Playing a narcissistic raconteur is a comfy fit for Powell, whose offscreen pursuit of success is equal parts shamelessness and self-deprecation. He may want to be a movie star almost as much as Becket wants to be a billionaire (why else would he sanction an entire Instagram page for his terrier-poodle mix, Brisket?), but he’s self-aware enough to mitigate his reputation as an obnoxious overachiever by gamely playing one onscreen.
As someone who gets a kick out of Powell’s sincerity and swagger, I want to see his dreams of hyper-stardom fulfilled. Yet just as inheriting a fortune metaphorically castrates Becket, becoming the next Tom Cruise may send Powell plummeting back to Earth, since watching him struggle to soar is half the fun.
