How far would you go to be a billionaire?
Some people, to quote Bruno Mars, want to be a billionaire so freaking bad, and it shows.
The movie opens with a jail scene. Becket Redfellow (Glen Powell) is awaiting execution and is confessing to a priest, and says, “I guess you’d like to know how I got here…”
Right from the start, I was hooked. Glen Powell has that right balance of smarm and affability – the most disarming of murderers. Becket’s mother was disowned by her family when she took up with a poor musician. Even when she became pregnant and her boyfriend passed away (somewhat comically) as she was giving birth, her family still wanted nothing to do with her. She brought up Becket to know where he came from, and repeatedly made him promise to her that one day he would recover his birthright.
When she died, Becket was a young teenager and rode his bike to the family mansion to tell them, to try to make them take him in. He was handed a note by the butler telling him that while they are aware of the situation, there’s nothing they will do.
Becket knows that he’s on his own, but notices a classmate, Julia, has been watching him. Julia is perfectly played by Margaret Qualley, with a sense of entitlement and lack of understanding of the rest of the world that the ludicrously rich appear to have. Julia becomes his friend, then girlfriend, though they lose contact until as adults, Julia walks into the menswear shop that Becket is working in. She is now engaged, and asks him about the Redfellow fortune, which Becket says he is still working on. “Call me when you’ve killed them all,” she says, a throwaway line as she swans out of the shop to meet her fiancée.
And so Becket starts considering this… Looking at the family tree, there are only 7 people standing between him and billions of dollars. Only 7 people…
How to Make a Killing has been described as a modern version of the 1949 British film Kind Hearts and Coronets, which itself was a loose adaptation of a 1907 British novel, Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by Roy Horniman. There was also a Broadway musical, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, based on the same novel which was first performed in 2012. Apparently, we have a fascination with the wealthy, especially when they start killing each other!
While it was filmed in South Africa, you would never know, as there is the beautifully classy Long Island family mansion and other city scenes that make you believe that you are in New York.
I absolutely loved this film. There are so many twists and turns, that right up until the end, anything could happen – even though we know how it started out, with Becket in jail. The friend I went with to see this, who often doesn’t like the same movies I do, loved it too, and we sat talking about it right up until the end of the credits.
Never mind how to make a killing, how about how to make a great movie! Engaging, entertaining, and will have you guessing right up until the end.
5/5 stars
Reviewed by Michelle Baylis
Out now in cinemas.
