‘How to Make a Killing’ Review: Glen Powell Leads a Dark Comedy About Wealth and Revenge

A cornerstone of British comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets, directed by Robert Hamer, stands as a quintessential example of Ealing Studios at its peak: dry, morbid, quietly vicious humor that felt downright scandalous in 1949. The story—of a serial killer recounting, on the eve of his execution, how he murdered a long line of “relatives”—also became legendary for Alec Guinness playing eight different roles, each one an obstacle between the murderer and his ultimate goal.

Three quarters of a century later, How to Make a Killing dares to revisit that blueprint in a film that, despite being billed as merely “inspired by,” is effectively a remake, preserving even specific narrative beats of the original. Nothing about its premise feels scandalous today; if anything, it plays like an exaggerated reflection of contemporary obsessions with power—and, above all, vast wealth—at any cost.

The film circles similar thematic territory as Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, centering on a man driven to eliminate his competition after a financial downfall. In this case, the stakes are even higher: billions. Becket Redfellow (Glen Powell) is the sidelined heir of a sprawling business dynasty, cut off from the family fortune. And he’s willing to do whatever it takes to reclaim it—even if that means disposing of a long list of cousins and uncles he’s never met.

Much like the original—only now relocated to the United States, where capital punishment still exists—the film opens with Becket hours before his execution, confessing his crimes to a priest in his cell. Through this framing device, we learn that his mother, Mary, was disinherited after becoming pregnant at eighteen and choosing to keep him. She married a classical musician who died during childbirth, leaving Becket to grow up with her in modest circumstances in New Jersey, far removed from the wealth she once knew. After repeated rejections from their affluent relatives, Mary falls ill and dies, while Becket continues working retail jobs, quietly formulating a plan.

Before her death, Mary makes it clear that Becket remains in the line of succession—an adaptation of the aristocratic inheritance system from the original into a corporate context. From there, the logic becomes chillingly simple: the only way to access the fortune is to eliminate every relative ahead of him. When he loses his job and watches his childhood friend Julia Steinway (Margaret Qualley) marry into wealth, he finally acts. The film then follows his methodical campaign, one eccentric relative at a time, even as his personal circumstances begin to shift.

Without a single performer in multiple roles, the film instead assembles a recognizable ensemble—Zach Woods, Bill Camp, Topher Grace, and Ed Harris among them—most playing variations on deeply unappealing figures. Along the way, an understated romance emerges with Ruth (Jessica Henwick), echoing a similar dynamic from the original, while Julia’s recurring presence adds both tension and a certain sardonic energy. Inevitably, suspicion begins to circle: even in a world where evidence seems oddly irrelevant, the “accidental” deaths of so many members of a powerful family don’t go entirely unnoticed.

While the film’s central theme—unchecked ambition and the cruelty it breeds, affecting both perpetrator and victim—feels attuned to the present, and the director of Emily the Criminal shows a solid grasp of pacing, How to Make a Killing never quite achieves the lift or tonal precision of its predecessor. It lacks the original’s sharply etched, bone-dry wit. Casting may be part of the issue: Powell strains for charm, but rarely seems fully aligned with the film’s tonal demands, especially on the comedic front. Qualley, by contrast, seems to understand exactly what kind of movie she’s in. Her performance channels classic film noir femmes fatales through a playful, slightly parodic lens, and the film noticeably sharpens—both in tension and humor—whenever she’s on screen.

Still, How to Make a Killing is far from a total misfire. It’s reasonably engaging, features a handful of well-executed sequences (particularly the first two murders, which effectively sketch the frivolous world Becket longs to inhabit), and its central romance provides a kind of moral counterweight. Ruth moves within the same sphere of wealth and appearances, but maintains a critical distance. Becket, by contrast—damaged by years of familial rejection—clings to a sense of entitlement that never quite invites reflection. And that, ultimately, is the core of the film: a portrait of ambition unmoored from purpose, in a remake that may be uneven, but remains intermittently compelling.