How to Make a Killer Review – How to Make a Pointless Reprint | Glenn Powell

THere’s the solid, if soulless, on-paper reasoning behind the existence of How to Kill, decisions that one can imagine getting some enthusiastic shouts inside an L.A. boardroom. We have an IP (beloved Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets), a Blacklist script (originally titled Rothchild back in 2014), a major man of the moment (the omnipresent Glen Powell), a co-star and a woman of the moment (the equally omnipresent Margaret Qualley), a trend (Eat the Rich), and an indie company turned marketable brand (A24). And a filmmaker who recently made his debut (John Patton Ford of Emily the Criminal). If ChatGPT creates an AI service for studio executives, this would be a clear green light.

But when she is dragged into the real world, the world of discrimination and taste, she is a package that raises a series of troubling questions. Can Powell shake off the burgeoning murderous psychopath? Is it time to stop relying on the blacklist as a taste test for quality? Has rich fatigue eaten into the appointment? More importantly, why would one try to reproduce a near-perfect classic?

At the end of the 110 minutes, I can give the answers: no, yes, 100% and I really have no idea.

I had plenty of time to at least think, given how tepid the whole thing was, an experience akin to watching someone try to light a match when the entire box is wet. Ford wants this to be fast and stylish, and while it certainly has a sense of prestige (except Cape Town makes an unconvincing New York stand), there’s no spark here, no breath that hasn’t been stolen from elsewhere.

One of the most delicious comedies ever made, the 1949 original is both very much of its time (including the blatant use of a racist nursery rhyme) and timeless in its plot. The story, about a man who is unjustly cast out and kills his way up the family tree to obtain his inheritance, remains as darkly seductive as ever, a captivating game of push and pull as the protagonist descends from a place of compassion to a position of brutality. Reports have suggested that the remake was “inspired” by the original but this is a clear remake, with many of the tunes remaining almost identical, painstakingly pulled into a new era.

Louis is now Beckett, whose mother rejected her wealthy family’s suggestion of an abortion after she found herself young, unmarried and pregnant. She is taken out of her padded comfort (all the way to New Jersey) to become a struggling single mother but when she dies years later, Beckett is a young orphan, forced into the foster care system. However, several years later, he toils miserably as a low-wage retail worker, and hatches a plan to get what is rightfully his.

The path to the top of the food chain is similar but with some modern modifications—the boat becomes a yacht, the village photographer is an insufferable Brooklyn artist, the pastor is a flamboyant celebrity preacher—but all the edges have been smoothed out. There’s nothing here that comes close to Lewis’s bitter nastiness of diphtheria killing the twin infants in the icier original (plus the mother as a bonus) as Ford makes Beckett’s victims all the more horrific and deserving of any violence that comes their way (perhaps wisely no one attempted to replicate Alec Guinness’s astonishing gambit of dealing with all eight victims, instead having them played by actors including Topher Grace and the scene-stealing Ed Harris).

Powell, with his exaggerated comic book traits, plays a character like Disney’s Patrick Bateman, completely lacking in any real darkness, smooth rather than slippery, substituting acid for snark (his delivery is in increasing danger of veering into creepy Ryan Reynolds territory). As his childhood friend turned adult enemy, Qualley certainly has more bite (one can see her quickly dispatching Powell in a knife fight) but there’s no chemistry and no serious stakes in his relationship with Jessica Henwick’s increasingly suspicious lover.

Ford is so keen to side with Beckett, who is portrayed as a man just trying to stay afloat in a sea full of snakes, that any interest we might have in watching someone gleefully discover his psychopathic talent for murder evaporates (Ford was able to explore Aubrey Plaza’s criminal underworld much better in his previous film – in fact Plaza would have made a more suitable role here). Updating a story like this, with the original set at the turn of the 20th century, means that any tricks Lewis might have used at the time would be mostly impossible now, with DNA and security cameras, and Ford falling over himself trying to explain things out of the ordinary, turning the elegant whodunit into something far more clumsy. There’s no real satire here either (apparently people with money suck, ya catch that?) and at this point in the rich eating cycle, I just want it to end. Forget the murder, Ford created real chaos instead.