‘How to Make a Killing’ Review: Glen Powell Can’t Save This Toothless Black Comedy

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Feb 20

Written By Jonathan P. Moustakas

A slick premise and a game cast aren’t enough to keep this bloodless satire from flatlining.

There’s a particular kind of movie star moment Glen Powell seems to be chasing right now — the pivot point where charisma meets credibility, where a performer known for easy charm proves he can carry something darker, sharper and more tonally daring. In theory, John Patton Ford’s ‘How to Make a Killing’ should be exactly that vehicle. Loosely inspired by the wicked British classic ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets,’ the film hands Powell a morally dubious antihero, wraps him in glossy black-comedy packaging and asks audiences to root for a serial killer with a smile.

In practice, the film never quite figures out what it wants to be — and Powell, despite flashes of effort, can’t bridge the tonal gap.

Ford, coming off the nervy success of ‘Emily the Criminal,’ clearly aims to blend social satire with pitch-black humor. The premise is inherently promising: Becket Redfellow (Powell), disowned by his wealthy family patriarch, decides to methodically eliminate the relatives standing between him and a massive inheritance. Structurally framed through Becket’s death-row confessional with a priest, the story gestures toward the kind of deliciously amoral ride that black-comedy fans crave.

But from its earliest scenes, ‘How to Make a Killing’ reveals a hesitancy that ultimately defines the entire film. It wants the bite of satire without the discomfort. It wants the thrill of murder without the moral mess. Most damagingly, it wants Powell to remain likable even while committing a string of calculated killings — a balancing act the film never fully earns.

Powell remains, as ever, an undeniably watchable screen presence. His matinee-idol ease hasn’t dimmed since ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ and he brings a professional polish to Becket’s dry narration and increasingly convoluted schemes. Yet the performance feels constrained by the material’s refusal to let him get truly dangerous. Becket is written less as a gleefully immoral schemer and more as a mildly frustrated guy pushed into extreme behavior by circumstance.

That might work in a sharper script. Here, it leaves Powell stranded in tonal limbo.

The film repeatedly signals that Becket’s victims are sufficiently obnoxious to justify their fate, a narrative shortcut that drains the story of real tension. A great black comedy forces the audience into uncomfortable complicity. ‘How to Make a Killing’ instead keeps its hands clean, sanding down the moral edges until the entire enterprise feels oddly weightless.

Ford’s decision to structure the film around Becket’s death-row conversations should, in theory, provide a strong spine. Adrian Lukis’ priest offers moments of dry reaction humor, and the flashback device allows the film to hopscotch through Becket’s escalating crimes. But the rhythm never quite clicks. Scenes arrive, deliver their narrative information, and move on without the escalating dread or comic momentum the premise demands.

Where the film does briefly spark to life is in its supporting performances.

Margaret Qualley, continuing her streak as one of the most reliably electric performers of her generation, injects welcome unpredictability as Becket’s childhood acquaintance turned chaos agent. Qualley understands the tone the film should be playing in — sly, dangerous, faintly amused by the absurdity of it all. Every time she enters the frame, the movie briefly remembers it’s supposed to be fun.

Similarly, Bill Camp delivers the film’s most emotionally grounded work as Becket’s one genuinely decent relative. Camp brings warmth and quiet humanity to material that desperately needs it, and his scenes carry a weight the rest of the film struggles to generate. Unfortunately, the screenplay ultimately undercuts the emotional investment his performance builds.

Topher Grace, meanwhile, leans fully into caricature as a megachurch celebrity preacher, delivering one of the film’s few genuinely sharp comic turns. His brief bursts of energy highlight the larger issue: whenever the film allows itself to be broadly satirical, it briefly works. It simply doesn’t commit to that mode often enough.

Jessica Henwick, as Becket’s love interest Ruth, is given the thankless task of grounding the story emotionally. She does what she can with thin material, but the romantic subplot feels perfunctory, as though inserted out of obligation rather than organic character development. The chemistry never quite ignites, and the relationship lacks the complexity needed to counterbalance Becket’s increasingly dark actions.

Visually, the film is competent but unremarkable. Ford and his team maintain a clean, controlled aesthetic that mirrors the story’s emotional restraint — perhaps too well. For a film about calculated murder and family rot, ‘How to Make a Killing’ often looks oddly polite. There’s little of the visual mischief or tonal boldness that might have elevated the material.

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What’s most surprising, given Ford’s previous work, is how safe the film ultimately feels. ‘Emily the Criminal’ succeeded because it embraced discomfort and let its protagonist spiral into morally murky territory. Here, the filmmaker seems caught between honoring the nastiness of the source inspiration and preserving mainstream palatability. The result is a film that pulls its punches at nearly every crucial moment.

By the time the narrative reaches its conclusion, the central problem becomes impossible to ignore: the film wants the audience to enjoy Becket’s journey without ever fully confronting what that journey entails. The murders lack sting. The satire lacks teeth. The emotional stakes never quite solidify.

Powell deserves some credit for continuing to stretch beyond his comfort zone. There’s clear ambition in the choices he’s making at this stage of his career, and moments here suggest he could absolutely anchor a darker, more daring project in the future. But ‘How to Make a Killing’ isn’t the breakthrough vehicle he may have hoped for.

Instead, it lands as a curiously muted exercise — too soft to be shocking, too restrained to be hilarious, and too emotionally distant to be dramatically compelling. In trying to be palatable to everyone, the film ends up fully satisfying no one.

For a story built around murder as upward mobility, the real casualty here is momentum. What should have been a wickedly entertaining descent into moral chaos instead plays like a well-behaved imitation of sharper films that came before it.