Early on in John Patton Ford’s How to Make a Killing, Mary Redfellow (Nell Williams), a pregnant teenager, gets a shocking ultimatum from her father, the family patriarch Whitelaw (Ed Harris): She can either abort the child, or proceed with the pregnancy and be excommunicated from the family and its vast fortunes. She chooses the former, raising young Beckett (Grady Wilson) in blue-class urban America. But there’s a lifeline. Despite being  excommunicated, Beckett is one of the beneficiaries to the $30 billion family dynasty. If only those pesky cousins were out of the picture.

Flash forward twenty years or so later, and adult Beckett (now played smirkingly by Glen Powell) continues to grind it with the servicing class; ironically, selling expensive suits he couldn’t afford. It is not a profession that impresses childhood crush Julia (Margaret Qualley). When Beckett is demoted to make way for a nepotistic hire, he decides that enough is enough. It’s time to bring his own inheritance to a head. As his mum tells him rather cryptically, he must fight for the life he deserves.

Killing is Ford’s follow-up to his 2022 rather good debut Emily the Criminal, which was a quiet film that focused on small details. Like Killing, it ruminated on questions of privilege, identity and class through the lens of those at the bottom of the ladder. Emily (Aubrey Plaza) steps outside the law because of student debt and a criminal record. Her desperation is the natural byproduct of a system that rewards generational privilege but subjugates the downtrodden.

Killing is a different proposition. Loosely based off a 1949 English film Kind Hearts and Coronets, it is a broad black comedy directed squarely at the rich elite, who are presented as unsympathetic vignettes. There’s Wall Street bro Taylor Redfellow (Raff Law), or televangelist Steven Redfellow (Topher Grace), or trust fund pretend artist Noah Redfellow (Zach Woods, by far the standout) and his girlfriend Ruth (Jessica Henwick), a love interest. Beckett must methodically dispatch each of these characters, his own cousins, in service of the film’s unsubtle metaphor; that capitalism is cannibalism. Whether you’re taking someone’s career, or taking their business, or (literally) killing your own family, violence is inherent to success within the system.

But gee whiz, it’s obvious stuff. It feels almost as if Ford wrote Killing with the Netflix mantra in mind, that viewers should be able to watch with one eye on their phone while they endlessly scroll. There’s even a voiceover to give us a friendly catch-up in case we’ve drifted off during the film’s one-note premise. Which isn’t helped by Powell, handsome but without pathos, who delivers yet another incredibly unvulnerable turn. He’s a protagonist who’s impossible to root for. Which makes Killing a satire without an emotional core, incapable of raising provocations, or trading in emotional ambiguities. Hollywood has approached this fare better more recently; stick to Triangle of Sadness or The Menu or even Saltburn. And somebody, please, find Powell a vehicle that works.

 

How to Make a Killing opened yesterday in Australian cinemas.