‘How to Make a Killing’ Review

Anticapitalist art has been abundant for several years now, as income inequality grows starker and everyday anger reaches a fever pitch. Films in this genre share thematic DNA, but have the flexibility to otherwise handle the topic however they want, and many have done so successfully, be it as a comedy, a horror, a drama.

Unfortunately, ‘How to Make a Killing’ never commits fully to a single lane, trying to be too many things at once, and the result is often frustrating even as a charming Glen Powell does his best to keep the action breezy.

‘How to Make a Killing’ opens with Becket Redfellow (Glen Powell) being visited by a priest hours before he is set to be executed. Initially reluctant to speak to the priest, Becket is calm and collected and decides he’ll spend his final hours of life spilling out his entire life story, starting with his mother’s disownment from her oligarch family and his lifelong quest to eliminate every heir between him and the fortune he feels he so rightly deserves.

As a framing element, Becket divulging all his crimes to the priest is nonsensical and lazy, allowing for hack-y voiceover narration providing unnecessary layers of backstory, resulting in a slow beginning that takes too long to get its dramatic bearings. But when Becket loses his job and finally embarks on his murderous journey through the Redfellow heirs, the film finds a darkly comic rhythm.

The film is at it’s best when it leans fully into its dark comedy, moving with a manic energy as Glen Powell acts as a suave everyman striver version of Agent 47, killing increasingly more detestable rich people in increasingly more creative ways. Each smash cut to a new funeral is comedic gold.

But unfortunately, the movie also wants to be a grounded crime drama, giving Becket a love interest who insists that money itself cannot be the endgame and an adversary who threatens to uncover his crimes, requiring a suspension of disbelief as to who suspects him, when and why.

And then it wants to be an incisive social commentary, wrapping everything together with an I’m-14-and-this-is-deep level of satire and cynicism that, quite frankly, feels unearned given the thematic indecisiveness of the preceding 90 minutes.

Following 2025’s ‘The Running Man’, Glen Powell is once again working in the realm of eat-the-rich crime thriller, but his talents are much better deployed here. Through his natural charm, Powell is able to elevate an otherwise unsympathetic character into an antihero, a serial killer we can’t help but root for due to Powell’s sheer willpower.

Margaret Qualley, with a similarly underwritten character, unfortunately suffers mightily. I often find myself waffling on whether I think Qualley is a good actress, but in this film I found myself annoyed every time she came on screen. With every appearance, Qualley tries the absolute most to be sexy and bad , but the resulting effect is grating and obnoxious. She is further underserved by the role itself, which is less a character than it is plot development in high heels. It’s a shallow character that is unfortunately emblematic of the shallowness of the entire film.

More to Powell’s level, the cast is filled with game character actors bringing to life a wide range of to-be-killed billionaires – Bill Camp, Zach Woods, Topher Grace, Ed Harris. Each actor brings something different to their character, adding depth and humor and keeping the drama engaging even as the storytelling ambitions are never fully realized.

Glen Powell’s charisma and star power can unfortunately only do so much to elevate ‘How to Make a Killing’’s dramatic shortcomings. Becket is persistently shown to be a hollow capitalist himself, whose only difference from the people he kills – and to be clear, he is a murderer – is they have money and he wants money. He has no other ambitions, no dreams, nothing that truly separates him from the bad guys. Thus I’m never fully cheering for Becket, nor am I cheering for his victims. The film is a toxic mess of unlikable people trying to kill and avoid being killed by other annoying people.

As ‘How to Make a Killing’ ends with its best idea for gotcha social commentary, the resulting effect is less thought provoking than it is maddening, with writer and director John Patton Ford making the misguided decision to try to be important instead of fully embracing the black comedy that was so successful.

How to Make a Killing
Rated R for language and some violence/bloody images.
Running Time: 1 hour and 45 minutes

Director John Patton Ford
Writers John Patton Ford
Stars Glen Powell, Margaret Qualley, Jessica Henwick, Bill Camp, Zach Woods, Topher Grace, Ed Harris
Rating R
Running Time 105 Minutes
Genres Comedy, Drama, Thriller