Glen Powell on How to Keep a DOA Comedy Alive

Every decade gets at least one charismatic male movie star who’s drop-dead gorgeous yet somehow guy-next-door relatable, action-hero intense one second and irresistibly charming the next. The 1980s briefly had Tom Cruise, before he officially began his ascent to the blockbuster-making industrial machine he is today. The 1990s got George Clooney, the 2000s had Jon Hamm (kind of), and the 2010s handed the honor to Ryan Gosling. So far, the closest thing the 2020s have to fill that slot is Glen Powell, a native of the Lone Star state blessed with a smile that melts butter and and aw-shucks amiability. The breakout star of Richard Linklater’s shaggy ensemble jam Everybody Wants Some!! (2016), Powell quickly proved that he had leading-man chops. You need someone who looks good in tuxedo, seems natural flying a fighter jet and fighting off futuristic goons, and can somehow sell you a romantic comedy in the 21st century? Glen’s your man.

It’s not a surprise that Powell is the best thing about How to Make a Killing, which filters his star wattage through an arthouse lens darkly. It’s a slight disappointment that he’s really the only reason to see this pitch-black farce about a young man murdering his way to the top, given that the movie’s primary source material — more on that in a second — was practically begging for a redo set in the era of late capitalism and anti–one-percenter sentiment. The scenario: A gentleman awaits his execution on Death Row. His name is Becket Redfellow, and given that he’s got four hours left to live, he wants to tell the prison chaplain his story. “I should warn you,” Becket says. “It’s a tragedy.”

A long time ago, in a tax bracket far, far away, a girl fell in love with a guy. He was was a musician from a modest background. She was the daughter of one Whitelaw Redfellow, noted billionaire and not-so-nice guy. (We apologize for the redundancy in the previous sentence.) The young woman became pregnant. Whitelaw banished his daughter from the family, thus cutting her off from the family fortune. Living in economic exile in suburban New Jersey, she raises her son, Becket, on her own. He learns how to play piano, excel in archery, and hate the upper crust. Due to a clause in the family trust, however, Becket still has a chance to inherit the family fortune and all the luxuries that come with it. There are just a handful of other Whitefellows, a.k.a. “seven rich pricks,” in line to claim the loot before he can. And, as Becket notes to the priest, “their mortality was irritatingly long.”

Becket grows up with a chip on his shoulder. The good news is, he’s blessed with Glen Powell’s genetics and ability to keep the audience on his side, which helps immensely once our hero decides that there’s no time like the present to “prune a few branches on the family tree.” Some cousins, like the rancid finance-bro Taylor (Raff Law) and the evangelist scam artist Steven (Topher Grace, milking his scant screen time to the max), have it coming to them. Others, like the zero-talent hipster artist (Zach Woods) who refers to himself as the White Basquiat, are merely inconvenient irritants standing in Becket’s way to life on easy street. Only his Uncle Warren (Bill Camp) is worthy of sympathy, and not just because he takes pity on Becket after hearing his tale of woe. The man gets his exiled nephew a job on Wall Street and mentors him. There’s also a romantic interest in the form of Ruth (Jessica Henwick), a school teacher. Maybe a comfortable life sans the need to murder your extended family is enough for Becket after all.

Except every Eden contains a serpent, and this one’s viper is particularly venomous. As a boy, Becket carried a torch for a rich girl named Julia. When the now-grown Julia (played by Margaret Qualley) reappears in his life, the former childhood crush clocks the coincidentally growing body count associated with his newfound social status. Perhaps Becket should finish what he started and knock off the rest, she suggests, while cutting her in for a hefty percentage of the family fortune. Failure to do so would require Julia to tell the authorities what she knows. And given that two cops are already sniffing around the Whitefellows’ sudden propensity for premature expiration, Beckett suddenly finds himself in quite a predicament.

Keen observers, anglophiles, and anyone who watches movies made before 1972 will notice more than a casual similarity to Kind Hearts and Coronets, the old Ealing comedy in which an enterprising young Dennis Price attempts to off his relatives in order to claim the family fortune. Writer-director John Patton Ford has openly acknowledged the inspiration; the only thing missing is an Alec Guinness type who’d don prosthetics and play all of the relatives. Given the way that Powell nailed the outrageous, fake-assassin sting operations in Hit Man (2023), you know our man could probably pull it off and still fulfill his leading-man duties.

Although maybe it’s best to not bring up that previous star vehicle involving manufactured personas, blackmail, potential femme-fatale types, and the messy art of murder, given that it’s a far stronger example of both the actor’s strengths and sharp, class-conscious satire that balances thrills, chills and an abundance of irony. The comparison only makes How to Make a Killing seem that much weaker overall. Powell does have help keeping this slightly D.O.A. take on the have-nots versus the haves alive — Qualley understands that though the camera remains fixated on her legs, she still has to provide her character with a proper set of fangs, and a late appearance by Ed Harris as Becket’s grandfather adds 10ccs of adrenaline. (Between this film and Love Lies Bleeding, the Oscar-nominated actor has cornered the market on corrosive geriatric patriarchs.)

But it’s really all resting on Powell’s broad shoulders. Whether you think the ending dilutes Kind Hearts‘ wicked punchline or manages to double down on the darkness regarding where it leaves its aspirational hero, the movie still functions better as proof of concept for the actor’s ability to win audiences over. The question isn’t: What would you do, knowing that a few more murders and a lot less personal morality would make your life easier? It’s really: Would you spend close to two hours watching a likable movie star play someone desperate enough to kill people in order to get rich? The answer depends on who you cast. If nothing else, How to Make a Killing is an abject lesson in how to hire the right person to salvage your movie.