How to Make a Killing

We’ve had the ‘McConaissance’; now comes the ‘Glenlightenment’. Like his fellow Texan, albeit a couple of decades younger, Glen Powell is a gifted and charismatic comic performer with proper dramatic chops too. What he isn’t, to the detriment of this watered-down comedy-thriller, is a miracle worker. 

Remaking Ealing comedies is a fool’s errand, even when it’s done unofficially. But writer-director John Patton Ford’s serial-killer yarn is inspired by Kind Hearts and Coronets and it has nothing of that 1949 classic’s bite and crackle. (That the story credit has gone to Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal, the 1907 book that inspired Kind Hearts, should fool no one.) Here, it’s Powell in the Alec Guinness role and a variety of watchable actors in the roles Dennis Price played so memorably.

Powell is Becket Redfellow, an heir to a tycoon’s fortune who is tossed aside as a boy and hatches a plan to claw his way back into the old man’s will. The only thing standing in his path to those billions is his seven relatives. We meet him on Death Row wearing a silk eye mask, fussing over his last meal with the calmness of a man who clearly plans to eat further meals. He’s the narrator of his own story but in keeping with this meat-and-two-veg murder-athon, his tale isn’t especially full of tricks and feints. Giving away (most of) the ending is unwise. 

And therein lies the issue: How To Make a Killing is not a Grand Guignol bloodbath – with the exception of the first offing, involving a snoozing relative, a yacht and a handy anchor and chain, the killings aren’t especially involved – and there’s nothing to solve, no big final twist and zero procedural tension. The class satire, the strongest suit of its Ealing ancestor, is blunter than a burglar’s cosh.

The murders should be the juice in this devilish cocktail, especially with Zach Woods, Topher Grace and Ed Harris as the marks. But the deaths are throwaway affairs. The cops, led by Motsi Tekateka, are stumped by this trail of corpses that points directly to Becket.

Which all leaves Powell’s charisma needing to work double-time. Luckily, he has a Margaret Qualley by his side as a femme fatale from the Barbara Stanwyck school: she’s Becket’s childhood friend who has grown up a proper wrong-un and whose lusty advances her suddenly enriched old pal just about resists. Maybe they could have sold this as a bloodier alternative to Wuthering Heights?

In US theaters Fri Feb 20. In UK and Ireland cinemas Mar 11.