Once you’ve read the logline for How to Make a Killing (formerly Huntington), the follow-up to filmmaker John Patton Ford’s engaging debut Emily the Criminal, your expectations may run high. Glen Powell is set to go homicidal on his estranged, wealthy family members, all so that he can win a hefty inheritance sooner than later? Sign me up. This movie, an adaptation of Roy Horniman’s classic novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal, certainly plays out as it was marketed, but sad to say, that’s also its problem. Just sticking to the basics of the plot and never going beyond makes How to Make a Killing a forgettable effort.
Straight off The Running Man (2025), Glen Powell is poised to resume his role as a not-so abiding citizen who’s out to make big bucks. The difference here, though, Powell’s character of Becket Redfellow—a name that screams “money”—isn’t a good guy in a bad situation. No, on the contrary, he’s a bad guy in a good-for-him situation.
The director and writer, Ford, never lands on either side of the morality fence; and neither do we, as we suffer through Beckett’s internal tug-of-war. It comes down to a question of whether or not the filmmaker, or perhaps even the lead, didn’t want the protagonist to be an all-out villain. Frankly, leaning into the crazy and unabashedly immoral would have done wonders for How to Make a Killing. Instead, we are left with an indifferent movie that often feels like it forgot to be funny, in spite of its “dark comedy” billing.
That all said, the setup is evergreen and potentially entertaining. Powell’s Beckett wants to inherit what he believes is his: his rich-as-hell family’s money. The same family that cast his single mother out after she got pregnant at a young age, and didn’t bother to console or support her son once she died. Now, the main character’s quick jump to murder spree would signal a breakneck thriller teeming with death set-pieces, right? Wrong. For some honest-to-god-why reason, Ford shows restraint when it comes to picking off Beckett’s paper-thin kin (more like caricatures befitting of a slapdash SNL skit). The killings are never as exciting as they should be, and Powell, bless his heart, doesn’t compensate for that weakness by breaking an actor’s sweat. His handsome face stays handsome, but that’s about it.
A side-plot here includes Beckett’s conscience slightly changing as he falls in love with the modest Ruth (Jessica Henwick), essentially someone proposed to be his character’s salvation, if the writing ever exerted more effort and time into that purpose. Then there’s Margaret Qualley, whose conniving Julia is the only bright light in this dim movie. Even then, she’s not enough to save the wishy-washy script.
There is that idea that you should take a movie for what it is, rather than what it isn’t. Yet with How to Make a Killing, that’s all you can think about. Powell is adequate but too inhibited and self-conscious; you want to shake him because you know he can do so much more than this. As for Ford, Emily the Criminal showed a lot of promise as a storyteller of characters with half-broken moral compasses. Here, however, you simply find someone afraid to bend the needle in any one way, especially the way that would have made this movie feel more fun.
How to Make a Killing opens nationwide on February 20.
Tales from the Paulside 
Leave a comment