Glen Powell is a Defanged Patrick Bateman Wannabe in John Patton Ford’s Lukewarm Black Comedy

Ever since Parasite grew to become an sudden field workplace and Oscar-winning success, there was a proliferation of movies which make the gamification of capitalism cinematic. Not that capitalism wanted gamification, which is endemic to its core, and never that Bong Joon-ho’s movie was the primary to take action. So long as movie has existed, filmmakers have been within the callousness of the crustiest of the higher crust. See: Jean Renoir’s critique of the French aristocracy amidst budding fascism, The Guidelines of the Recreation (1939) or, a lot later, Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Appeal of the Bourgeoisiean absurdist satire of the identical.

However with the wealth divide higher than ever earlier than, scores of movies have tried to fill the hole. Too many for these pages to rely. Sadly, for writer-director John Patton Ford, The way to Make a Killing is not even the one one within the final calendar yr, with Park Chan-wook’s No Different Selection a remarkably comparable, and far stronger, output. Primarily based on the 1949 traditional Form Hearts and Coronets, which makes The way to Make a Killing seem to be kid’s play by comparability, the movie’s presence inside this saturated, lengthy lineage of capitalist critique solely highlights its comparatively toothless method.

A surprisingly bland movie that in some way manages to dampen even Glen Powell’s normal model of easy appeal, The way to Make a Killing is sketched along with skinny characterizations, limp commentary and a sluggish tempo.

The way to Make a Killing Lacks the Viciousness of its Personal Premise

Its molasses-like motion is due, partially, to its constant telegraphing. There is not a single transfer in Ford’s movie that surprises. The little humor that exists is both broadcast from a mile away or else dropped at the fore in a Herculean effort by Zach Woods as a wealthy particular person’s poor conception of Andy Warhol (although the artist conceives of himself, in his phrases, as a “White Basquiat”). What it has to say about moneyed pursuit is usually appreciated, however by no means attention-grabbing. There’s nothing novel about suggesting that cash cannot purchase happiness, or that nepotism is basically unhealthy, or that legacy households are past the regulation.

In principle, The way to Make a Killing ought to play like an up to date American Psycho. However Beckett (Powell) isn’t any Patrick Bateman. He grows up as the one little one of the as soon as presumptive inheritor to the Redfellow fortune, raised by a mom who was disowned for getting pregnant on the age of eighteen. However the development of the household tree implies that, even with out having ever made contact along with his household, Beckett continues to be, technically, in line to the ten billion-dollar throne. So long as he can outlive seven older relations.

When his mom dies younger, Beckett’s fortunes out of the blue grow to be even additional off than they as soon as have been. Now an grownup working at a high-end go well with retailer in Manhattan, Beckett has kind of resigned to sharing a reputation however nothing else with the famously wealthy Redfellows. That’s, till, he runs into his childhood crush Julia (Margaret Qualley), who appears to plant the seed in Beckett’s mind that he ought to kill the seven cousins in his method, and who reappears occasionally within the movie like an underwritten Svengali.

The way to Make a Killing is constructed as a large flashback, with the current-day Beckett on loss of life row, confessing his life’s story to the chaplain. It is an odd alternative that removes almost all pressure from the story earlier than it has even begun. The selection may make sense if Ford made any selections that subverted expectations, however he virtually by no means does, until you rely the hassle to make us consider the catalog-worthy conventionally-handsome Powell is satisfactory as a blue-collar reject of high-class society.

The few makes an attempt right here that appear to need to divert our assumptions are clunky at finest. A big part of the movie is dedicated to Beckett assembly and falling in love with Ruth (Jessica Henwick), a dressmaker and aspirational trainer who’s so categorically not the kind of particular person to fall in love with the Wall Avenue banker Beckett turns into that all the relationship defies perception. Henwick does her finest with an awfully underwritten position whose motivations are by no means fairly as much as snuff, however it’s Beckett himself that by no means actually makes a lot sense.

This can be a thirty-something one who has spent his total life in poverty, but whose childhood was nurtured by a faithful mom that he adored. It simply by no means tracks that that is additionally somebody who would out of the blue, with none prior indication of character, out of the blue resolve to go on a homicide spree, and Ford is just too flippant with the main points. Beckett turns into an expert-level killer with information of extremely poisonous chemical substances almost in a single day, with none battle.

Most of The way to Make a Killing solely illicits a modest shrug. The place it desires to be satirical, its totally edgeless; the place it desires to be earnest, its trite and overdone. From its very title to its sputtering ending, its constant obviousness ensures Ford’s movie doesn’t kill nor die by muder however slowly, softly, falling in a weak whimper.

The way to Make a Killing releases theatrically on February twentieth, 2026.