How to Make a Killing

In the crowded landscape of dark comedies, 'How to Make a Killing' arrives with a wickedly sharp premise and a game cast, delivering a mostly successful cocktail of laughs and thrills. The film follows Becket Redfellow (Glen Powell), a man disowned at birth by his grotesquely wealthy family, who embarks on a hilariously desperate and morally flexible campaign to claw his way back into the inheritance. Director John Patton Ford, building on the scrappy energy of 'Emily the Criminal,' adeptly navigates the tonal tightrope between absurdist satire and genuine tension. The plot is a cleverly constructed Rube Goldberg machine of schemes, double-crosses, and escalating chaos, ensuring the 105-minute runtime zips by. Powell is perfectly cast, deploying his golden-boy charm to mask a deep-seated desperation and cunning. He's brilliantly matched by Margaret Qualley as a sharp, skeptical lawyer who gets entangled in his mess, and Ed Harris, who is deliciously cold and imposing as the patriarchal obstacle. The cinematography is slick, using the opulent, sterile spaces of the ultra-wealthy as a perfect visual counterpoint to Becket's grubby ambition. While the third act stumbles slightly into predictable territory, the journey there is so consistently entertaining and well-acted that it's easy to forgive. The script is packed with barbed one-liners and clever set pieces, like a disastrously botched blackmail attempt at a charity gala, that showcase the film's strengths: intelligence, pace, and a gleeful disdain for the one percent.