By 
Not until the day we sit down has Glen Powell fully appreciated his knack for playing charming, winsome, and morally flexible protagonists capable of getting away with murder. Granted, he co-wrote one such bloke in Hit Man, the beguiling romantic comedy he made with Richard Linklater a few years back that (SPOILERS) ends with his character and the object of his desire discovering how to commit to marriage over the death and cover-up of a bully.
That’s bush leagues though when compared to Powell’s newest dark comedy courtesy of A24, How to Make a Killing. The latest film from writer-director John Patton Ford (Emily the Criminal) sees Powell’s Becket Redfellow learn that the easiest way to get ahead on Wall Street is by offing the estranged and dynastic family line he was ostracized from before birth—but never so fully disowned by that he can’t inherit their billions once they die. It’s a gallows humor premise which Powell savored from the jump.
“It’s something that not until today I really unpacked, so you’re catching me at a weird time where, obviously, I’m going to have to talk to somebody about all this,” Powell quips. “[But] true crime is such an interesting thing, our fascination with the darker sides of ourselves, and I was always intrigued by how John viewed this movie as just American ambition. It’s a going-into-business movie about a young scrappy kid making it in the world, yet he’s stepping over the bodies of his own blood to get there.”
There is indeed something acutely all-American, perhaps even more so in the 21st century, about the setup. As Powell muses, “It’s a very American quality, just the lengths that we go in hustle culture—the lengths that you would go to become what you need to be.”
This facet is also intriguing since How to Make a Killing is ostensibly a film noir throwback as well, complete with its own femme fatale (Margaret Qualley) and a root in 1940s cinema, albeit of the British variety since it is loosely inspired by the 1949 English comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets.
“It’s funny how the original is so deeply entrenched in British classism, yet how incredibly John has made it feel so American,” observes Jessica Henwick, who plays Ruth, a woman Becket is also drawn to despite her lacking the cutthroat ambition of a Wall Street bro.
And the actor who plays the man between her and Becket, Zach Woods as the Redfellow ne’er-do-well Noah, even points out that the Global Social Mobility Index of 2020 ranked the UK as having a higher degree of class mobility than the U.S. (although both are, notably, not even ranked among the top 20 these days).
Says Woods, “There’s less barriers to socioeconomic advancement in a place where you can grow up three hundred yards from a place and have a totally different accent than your neighbor, yet still even there it’s easier to get ahead.”
Given both How to Make a Killing’s own lineage and stereotypes about UK culture versus the U.S., it’s a topic director Ford has a lot of fun with. But then, the whole movie features a curious joie de vivre despite offing new characters left and right. One such target includes Topher Grace in the delicious role of a Redfellow who’s gone into Christian rock evangelizing, and has the mega-church cult following to prove it.
“I’ve always been fascinated, even before I got the role, with not only religious leaders but also self-help gurus,” Grace reveals. “Basically it’s under the banner of anyone who gets up in front of the rest of the world and says, ‘I can show you how to lead a better life.’ I always thought that was hilarious, and then on top of it, there were a couple real specific people that I watched closely, and to me it’s endlessly hilarious because it’s so ironic.”
The appeal of doing this is playing marks whom the audience is willing to root against while we follow heroes of dubious ethics. It’s been a staple of cinema from at least the early days of noir to modern favorites. For example, Henwick is quick to point out how great Park Chan-wook’s recent Korean dark comedy of similar terrain, No Other Choice, can be. Grace, meanwhile, notes that some of his favorite movies are the Martin Scorsese films like Taxi Driver or Goodfellas. And for his part, Woods darkly suggests he always rooted for Man in Walt Disney’s Bambi (1942).
“He’s got to eat!” Woods insists with a twinkle in his eye. “And they’re overpopulated in this region! It’s a cult, goddammit!” And culling the cult might just be the most American thing you can do.
How to Make a Killing goes into business only in theaters on Friday, Feb. 20.
The post Glen Powell: Murder Can Have ‘An American Quality’ in How to Make a Killing appeared first on Den of Geek.
