Glenn Powell is Becket Redfellow, a suit salesman who grew up largely in the foster care system as his mother died while he was young. He is heir to the fortune of his mother's estranged family and, in the unlikely event all the other senior Redfellows should perish, he would be a billionaire. A chance encounter with his status obsessed childhood crush Julia (Margaret Qualley) and an unjust demotion at work give him the notion to speed up his inheritance a little. As he arranges "accidents" for his fellow Redfellows, things start to look up in his day to day life, leaving him questioning whether he should continue his quest and at what point enough is enough.
The film holds back from being the full-on dark comedy farce that the trailers hinted at and eschews the "eat the rich" satire that has been (can't think why) popular over the last few years. At its core, it's a modern take on the classic Dickensian themes of corrupting greed and class struggle. The problem is, lead character Becket is a bit of a one dimensional cipher.
Raised to believe he is due something special from life, it's understandable that he would have a chip on his shoulder and you can sympathise with his early frustrations but as things progress, his actions make little sense. He is clearly shown to have compassion, but thinks nothing of murdering strangers, even when the members of his family he identifies himself to are actually pretty kind to him. By the time he has a well paying job and healthy relationship and still can't quite decide if he should stop killing his relatives it's pretty hard to be remotely on board with him.
The motivation problems bleed out into other parts of the film. Becket has a romance with a trainee schoolteacher named Ruth (Jessica Henwick), whose philosophy is that a rewarding life beats a rich one. She is there as a counterpoint to Qualley's Julia, whose long-legged sex appeal represents the allure of status, but its hard to grasp what she would see in someone so obsessed with material gain. Not to mention the vacuous poser of a photographer she is with when she first meets Becket.
The absence of real characters may stop the film from successfully saying or meaning anything but it doesn't make How to Make a Killing a total write-off. Powell displays the easy charm that has seen him swiftly become one of Hollywood's go to leading men and his dependable charisma complements the highly polished look of the film. Qualley is underused but always interesting when on screen and there are fun turns from some big hitting actors as the various members of the Redfellow family, including Ed Harris as the menacing patriarch. Best of all is Topher Grace as a fraudulent mega preacher whose brief interaction with Becket is the comedic highlight of the movie.
Had How to Make a Killing leaned more into these funny moments, its limitations may have been less apparent. As is, director John Patton Ford has produced a slick enough caper, with some enjoyable moments but no substance at its heart. A character study needs characters to be effective.
6 yacht mishaps out of 10.
Comments
Post a Comment