A man gets disowned by his ridiculously wealthy family and decides that if they won’t give him the inheritance he believes should have been his, he will simply just remove everyone standing between him and the money. Oh well, that escalated pretty quickly.
Synopsis(possible spoilers)
Becket Redfellow (Glen Powell) is a blue-collar man who has spent his life on the outside of a his supposed wealthy family. His mother, Mary, was cut off from the family fortune after becoming pregnant with him as a teenager, leaving Becket to grow up knowing that an enormous inheritance exists but was never meant for him.
Then circumstances change when Becket discovers that the family fortune could potentially become his, only if the relatives currently ahead of him in the inheritance line were no longer around. And this is where Becket’s moral compass takes a spectacular vacation.
So, instead of accepting his position in life, he begins plotting the deaths of his wealthy relatives, working his way through the family one person at a time. His childhood friend Julia Steinway (Margaret Qualley) remains emotionally important to him, while other members of the Redfellow clan, including Warren (Bill Camp), Noah (Zach Woods), Pastor Steven (Topher Grace) and patriarch Whitelaw Redfellow (Ed Harris), become pieces in his increasingly dangerous game.
Review and Rating
The film begins with Becket already awaiting execution, so what follows is essentially his own account of how simply wanting his inheritance turned him into a serial killer. He tells the story with enough charm to make you occasionally forget that he is literally murdering his relatives for money.
The character of Becket is a very interesting kind of villain therefore I think Glen Powell was a particularly interesting choice there because he has this natural likability that makes it difficult to completely hate him. But that creates a problem because Becket is objectively terrible.
Becket isn’t simply motivated by greed. His resentment comes from growing up knowing that he was excluded from a world that could have been his because of circumstances surrounding his birth. He doesn’t merely want money, he wants recognition and wants the family that rejected him to acknowledge that he belongs among them.
Unfortunately, his solution to this emotional wound is basically to kill everybody instead of wait for them to die a natural death. Like Mr., Therapy was available. 😭
And This Is Where the Film Gets Dark
What I found more interesting than the murders themselves was the question underneath them. How much of Becket’s obsession is actually about money? Because if he only wanted financial security, there were other ways to live. But Becket wants their money, house, name, acceptance and he wants to win the exact game that was designed to exclude him. That right there, makes the film’s class commentary more interesting than the simple “rich people bad” approach.
Ford has already shown an interest in characters struggling against economic inequality in Emily the Criminal, and that same concern appears here, although this time it is wrapped in a much more absurd black-comedy package.
The black comedy worked for me, sometimes. I think this movie works best when it remembers that this is supposed to be funny. It is actually inherently absurd watching a man meticulously plan his way through a family tree because he wants to inherit their fortune. The film’s humour is deliberately dark, and I enjoyed the contrast between the horrifying things happening and the relatively casual manner in which Becket approaches them.
But I also felt that the humour could have been much sharper. This is where I think the film occasionally holds itself back. It has such an outrageous premise that I wanted it to go further. I wanted the satire to really sink its teeth into the absurdity of inherited wealth, family dynasties and the American obsession with making it to the top.
Instead, there are moments when it feels like the film is standing right beside a brilliant joke without quite making it.
Margaret Qualley as Julia
Julia is one of the characters I wanted more from. Her relationship with Becket gives us a glimpse of the person he might have been without the inheritance obsession. She knew him before all the madness, which gives their relationship a history that the film could have exploited much more deeply.
There is an interesting emotional question there which is, What happens when the person you care about slowly becomes someone you can no longer defend?
Julia sees Becket’s transformation from a different angle than the Redfellows do. And while I liked what the film was attempting with her character, I kept wishing the story would give that relationship more emotional weight.
Finally, How to Make a Killing is a strange little film. It’s a whole lot of things in one. A murder comedy, a family drama and a revenge story. It is also a commentary on wealth, inheritance and the resentment that can grow when you spend your entire life looking at a door you were never allowed to enter. I think that mixture is both its greatest strength and its weakness.
Rating: 7.5/10
Not as viciously funny as I wanted it to be, but definitely an interesting watch especially if you enjoy stories where money, resentment and a questionable moral compass walk into the same room and nobody comes out innocent.
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