3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): How to Make a Killing

2026, John Patton Ford (Emily the Criminal) -- download

I generally don't like fiction that puts unlikeable characters at the centre of the story. I have never watched Seinfeld, I didn't bother to watch Arrested Development and I had no desire to watch the rich summabitches of Succession. Yet, while I knew the premise of this movie was that a disowned heir to billions in old money started bumping off his own relatives, in order to leave himself as the only possible heir, I do like Glen Powell, Margaret Qualley and Jessica Henwick, so we gave it a go. Maybe a man murdering is relatives can be played for black comedy? Maybe the relatives are so comically evil, we don't mind them dying? Maybe he is so set upon, in life, that we forgive him his trespasses? All yes, but still, he never really becomes... likeable. And that was probably the point -- Fuck the Rich.

Since I am currently "not watching movies" and also "not writing", a good amount of time has passed since I wrote the above, and well, I am reaching "I Saw This!!" levels of escaped memory.

The movie is a death-row confessional. Becket Redfellow (Glen Powell, The Running Man), who was raised by his single mother, after she was ousted from her family fame & fortune for choosing to keep the boy, has been convicted of murder. Becket promises his mother on her deathbed that he will do everything he can to claim his heritage. Years later, while working dutifully in a men's haberdashery, he bumps into a childhood friend Julia (Margaret Qualley, The Substance), still precocious and deviously flirty, who reminds him of the promise he made to his mother. She is part of the world that Becket only got to watch from the outside as his mother seemed to still have some contact with her "friends", of whom Julia's mother was one. This reminder inspires Becket to kill his cousins, leaving him the only heir. We can only assume he ends up getting caught, given the opening of the movie.

I was very confused by the timeline of this movie. It was as if, at some point in the production of the movie, they had wanted it to be set 20 years ago. There are clothing choices, lifestyles depicted and even Becket's wonky haircut that are out of place -- he wears these cut-short sideburns, something I embraced in the late 90s all the way thru the late 2010s, but is entirely absent now. Some of the outfits adult Julia wears would not be out of place in the original The Devil Wears Prada. Maybe Patton Ford has a visual style? If so, its never truly embraced.

Becket's rise to power, through the death of unlikeable people, does not really endear us to him. And yet you are probably supposed to? I guess its just me. As he kills one cousin, a doofus flighty artist, he "steals" the man's girlfriend, giving us a mostly-likeable love interest. Ruth (Jessica Henwick, The Matrix Resurrections) is supposed to have agency but... And then Becket endears himself to the father of one of his victims, a truly likeable figure, which is weird considering he is a Wall Street investment mogul, all the while knowing he eventually has to kill the grieving man.

Black Comedy. That is what the movie is positioned as, and while there are some light chuckles, its mostly just black. If anything is played for fun, its that the FBI catches onto Becket's play almost immediately, but they seem unable to make things stick. Meanwhile snake-skinned Julia is played as an even bigger villain, catching Becket's scheme immediately, and getting the evidence of his acts, and he is just a pawn in her BIGGER plot. But its all about money & power, that some have, and others want.

There is no "rooting for" in this movie, and while I liked watching the movie, the performances by actors I enjoy, in thinking back, in writing about it, I am left exactly where I was before I started -- I do not enjoy watching bad people do bad things while setting us up to admire them. Sure sure, the commentary is that you become the monster you want to destroy, and there is some slice of "its in the blood", but ... meh.

And yes, I still think that, given billions to play with, I would not devolve into the Evil everyone believes is caused by money... well no more than I already am.  Cackle. Moustache Twirling.