How to Make a Killing review – Glen Powell’s Kind Hearts and Coronets remake | Films | Entertainment

It’s been 77 years since Kind Hearts and Coronets was released and became one of the greatest British films of all time.

To dare to remake the black comedy masterpiece and set it in the modern US is certainly a bold move, and writer-director John Patton Ford just about pulls it off.

How to Make a Killing opens with the ever-charismatic Glen Powell’s Becket Redfellow on death row less than an hour before his execution, as he recounts his life story to a priest,

Loosely based on the plot of the original, Becket’s mother was disowned by her wealthy family and raised him alone with a minimal income.

Following her death, he plots to murder his cousins, aunts and uncles to ensure he inherits his evil grandfather’s $28 billion inheritance.

Darkly comic and stylishly executed, Becket creatively plots his killings while evading the FBI and his old flame, played rather seductively by rising star Margaret Qualley. Early on, his uncle gives him a decent Wall Street job via nepotism, but Becket won’t stop there in his vendetta. Sadly, Ed Harris only cameos as the disowning grandfather, while we wish all the family members had been played by one actor, just as Alec Guinness did in Kind Hearts and Coronets.

Nevertheless, there’s plenty to enjoy and ponder over here as Becket’s moral choices (or lack thereof) come back to bite him. And by the time the ending comes around it does so with a satisfying wink at the audience in a thought-provoking commentary on the acquisition of wealth by the American ruling class of today.

How to Make a Killing is out now in cinemas.