‘How to Make a Killing’ review: Glen Powell’s murder comedy is funny as a corpse

There are eight deaths in “How to Make a Killing.” 

Seven are people and one is done-dirty source material. The blood. So much blood.

Writer-director John Patton Ford has misguidedly modernized “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” the classic Alec Guinness screen comedy that’s based on a 1907 British novel about an average Joe who discovers he’s part of an uber-rich family.

In the revamp, Mr. Everywhere Glen Powell plays conniving Becket Redfellow, a middle-class New Jersey tailor who hatches a plan of ruthless opportunism: Murder all his Manhattan kin and inherit their fortune.

Updates are fine for some stories. Not this one, though. Moving the action to a contemporary urban setting is akin to fitting a fairy with cement boots.  

In Edwardian England, a jolly killing spree was a sublime canvas for wit, dark playfulness, class commentary and, most essentially, plausibility. 

“It could happen,” you think. DNA evidence and ubiquitous security cameras were practically witchcraft then. And the crime scenes were vast green estates away from prying eyes.    

However in 2026 New York City, where “Kind Hearts” has been unkindly schlepped, you don’t believe a second of the scheme of Beckett Redfellow, starting with his silly name that Powell can barely say with a straight face. 

That the obvious methodical culling of a clan of billionaires (there are only some 3,000 billionaires on Earth) would be afforded just two preposterously casual FBI agents is, frankly, insulting to the viewer’s intelligence.

So is the absurd notion that the Bureau couldn’t make a case against an out-of-the-woodwork cousin who’s suddenly popping up all over the place and is extremely un-careful in his machinations. I’m sure the filmmakers figured Al Capone was finally put away for tax evasion, but that was nearly 100 years ago. 

Key to us suspending our disbelief is making a movie so fully enjoyable that reality is rendered inconsequential. That “How to Make a Killing” is merely fine in the first half and then unappetizingly somber and sluggish toward the end has us doubting every step of the way.

You’ll notice I have not yet mentioned Powell. Haven’t felt the need, to be honest. Perhaps he’s giving a perfect performance because he is so unassuming you barely notice he’s there. But I credit it more to the lack of mischief behind the eyes — or, really, the lack of anything behind the eyes. He could use a cockpit or a twister.  

Becket’s journey to vast wealth involves offing a septet of mostly colorful characters: a brainless playboy who jumps out of helicopters into swimming pools, a talentless Brooklyn artist, a Hillsong-like church leader (Topher Grace) and more milquetoast older relatives. 

As the Redfellow patriarch, Ed Harris plays the gun-toting man as if he resides in a shack in rural Oklahoma.   

I’m always wary of any movie that involves a countdown. Because if it’s a drag, you start thinking in terms of “only four more to go,” like staring at the clock as the school bell is about to ring. “How to Make a Killing” is very much a “checks watch” experience. 

The only other character of note is Julia (Margaret Qualley), Becket’s childhood friend who’s known about his secret psycho plot since they were children. She’s cold and calculating, though not in a titillating way — more like a TI-85. I wish Qualley would back off of these alien, quirky roles she keeps ending up in. She was such a heartbreaker in last year’s “Blue Moon” with Ethan Hawke. 

A much better adaptation of “Kind Hearts” is the Tony Award-winning musical “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” which made clever deaths into sprightly patter songs.

There’s nothing fleet-footed about “How to Make a Killing.” Get rich quick? Get rich slooooow.

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