Modern celebrities are a little like social media algorithms. Express an interest in something once, and you’ll be inundated with it for the next six months. Did you like that funny video of an otter? Well, that’s all you’re getting for the foreseeable future. A similar thing has happened with Glen Powell – after stealing the show in Top Gun: Maverick and proving his star wattage in Hit Man, he’s become a bonafide A‑Lister and the studios can’t get enough. After starring in Edgar Wright’s tame reworking of The Running Man last autumn, he’s back to eat the rich again in John Patton Ford’s How To Make A Killing, cast once more as a downtrodden young man who decides he’s had quite enough of the fat cats. Only this time, they’re related to him.
Loosely inspired by Kind Hearts and Coronets, Patton Ford’s film centres Becket Redfellow (Powell) a handsome, square-jawed all-American sort who’s on death row for murder. He relays his tawdry tale of familial fallout to a priest, explaining that his mother was expelled from her filthy rich dynasty for having a child out of wedlock and ever since he’s been on a mission to reclaim his birthright. After reconnecting with former childhood friend turned femme fatale Julia Steinway (Margret Qualley) Becket decides the only way he’s getting his mitts on the millions is through a systematic murder spree, picking off his odious cousins one by one.
It’s a song and dance we’ve seen before, with both Powell and Qualley operating on cruise control. We’ve seen these handsome WASPs before – they’ve played these handsome WASPs before. While Patton Ford’s previous film Emily the Criminal was a grim thriller about the way ordinary people are pushed towards extraordinary means to make ends meet, How To Make a Killing aims for fantastical and comes off as farce. The script’s dated qualities make sense when taking into account it first appeared on the Black List in 2014, but 12 years later we’ve not short of Eat the Rich movies.
This social satire – following in the footsteps of Triangle of Sadness, The Menu, Saltburn, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out trilogy, Parasite, Ready or Not and countless others – is hollow, once again settling for a mealy-mouthed “everyone sucks here” tone that leaves us with little reason to invest in any characters’ motivation or journey. Rich people are terrible, poor people are terrible, everyone’s out to get each other, the world spins madly on.
