In the new film “How to Make a Killing”, Glen Powell stars as Becket Redfellow, who is born under a great injustice. His mother was disowned from her filthy-rich New York family after she became pregnant by a poor cellist.
Becket’s dad awkwardly dropped dead just as he was being born. Mom struggled through years of single parenthood in New Jersey. But before she sickened and passed away, she taught Becket to appreciate the finer things in live and nurtured a belief that he’s a rightful heir to the Redfellow fortune—if only the seven relatives ahead of him in the line of succession would die off!
The plot is an update to a novel that inspired the 1948 black-comedy classic “Kind Hearts and Coronets”, set in Edwardian England. As an added inspired touch, the film had all the relatives (that is, murder victims) played by Alec Guinness. Incidentally, years later the rights holders to the film tried to sue a stage production, claiming they had a copyright for the notion of one actor playing the multiple roles.
For whatever reason, the new film, written and directed by John Patton Ford, has seven different actors playing the worthless, wealthy Redfellow heirs in present-day New York.
As written and performed, none of them are on the level of a
Guinness.
The heirs include a sap trying to be an avant-garde photographer (played by Zach Woods); a crooked rock n’ roll televangelist (played by Topher Grace); Ed Harris as the patriarch, a volatile psycho who comes out of the darkness like Nosferatu; and the one outlier, a kindly uncle (played by Bill Camp) who gives Becket a stock-broker job to try making up for the family’s sins.
Powell is a fairly likable anti-hero, although too much of the time, his resting face is a sort of Cheshire Cat grin.
He won’t make you forget the 1948 film, an ironic tale of morals and class divisions, where you sympathized with the anti-hero’s struggle to decide between his two leading ladies—one a bit too naughty, one a bit too conventional.
The new film gives us a black-and-white choice, between the leggy but thoroughly unlikable Julia (played by Margaret Qualley) and the moral, down to earth Ruth, played by Jessica Henwick.
“How to Make a Killing” is boosted by its source material, but is sour instead of witty. It rates two on a scale of five.
