In the six years since Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite swept the 2020 Academy Awards, we’ve seen no shortage of films tackling the dog-eat-dog brawl of late-stage capitalism. Recent movies like Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, and Sam Raimi’s Send Help all explored the intersection of class and violence while, to varying degrees of wittiness, imbuing these ideas with their respective auteurs’ jocularities. One of the new kids on the block, writer-director John Patton Ford, made waves with his 2022 feature debut Emily the Criminal, following a debt-plagued caterer, played by Aubrey Plaza, who spirals down Los Angeles’ criminal underbelly.
Now, Ford returns with How to Make a Killing (2026), a devious, cleverly crafted thriller that proves its star, Glen Powell, as a jack of all trades. Inspired by Robert Hamer’s 1949 film Kind Hearts and Coronets (which, in turn, is based on the 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by Roy Horniman), Ford’s reimagining follows blue-collar Becket Redfellow (Powell), the disgraced grandson of the billion-dollar Redfellow dynasty, as he kills and social-climbs his way into his wealthy family’s inheritance. It admittedly shares a similar narrative to No Other Choice. However, one should note that Israel Rank predates Donald E. Westlake’s The Ax (which served as Park Chan-wook’s source material) by ninety years.
Where the antiheroes of Israel Rank and Kind Hearts and Coronets vied for an Edwardian dukedom, Becket Redfellow’s ambitions are much higher… $28 billion, to be exact.
Climbing the Social Ladder
The road to success hasn’t exactly been a yellow-bricked one for John Patton Ford. After receiving his M.A. from the American Film Institute for his Sundance-winning thesis short, Patrol, Ford struggled with student debt and moonlighted as a caterer while working as a screenwriter-for-hire, a path that would later inform Emily the Criminal. Premiering to widespread praise at Sundance 2022, Emily the Criminal was nominated for four awards at the 2023 Independent Spirit Awards, with Ford taking home the trophy for Best First Screenplay. Emily the Criminal’s breakout success would give Ford free rein to choose his next project, as he finally dusted off his decade-old script, Rothchild, which would later go under the working title of Huntington.
Courtesy of A24
Rothchild ranked in the top five on the 2014 Blacklist, languishing in limbo for years until a sale at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival (Shia LaBeouf and Mel Gibson were originally set to star). The movie never came to fruition, though — for the better, if I may add. Putting this story on the back burner was a good choice for Ford, retrospectively, as a satire as deftly clever as this requires a far more delicate hand than the rage-fueled rawness of Emily the Criminal. It’s common for directors to hit the “sophomore slump,” but How to Make a Killing feels like an evolution of Ford’s developing knack for quick-witted, class-conscious thrillers.
Seven Relatives, Twenty-Eight Billion Dollars
Between Beckett and the big bucks stands a cavalcade of cousins, aunts, uncles, and one mean grandpa played by Ed Harris in a role that’s reminiscent of his turn in Snowpiercer (2013), another film adaptation that literalizes and satirizes class warfare. The Redfellow family is chock-full of uber-rich, obnoxiously loud personalities, including hacky art-pop photographers (Zach Woods), paranoid televangelists (Topher Grace), fratboy dipshits (Raff Law), Elon Musk-adjacent tech moguls (Sean Cameron Michael), mega-adoptive foster moms (Bianca Amato), and a mild-mannered loan manager (Bill Camp). Their respective comedic charms each take wry jabs at specific flavors of the 1%, though it’s never as absurdly funny as when Alec Guinness played every single target in Kind Hearts and Coronets.
Courtesy of A24
Rounding out the stacked ensemble are Margaret Qualley (The Substance) and Jessica Henwick (Silo) as Becket’s love interests: his childhood best friend, Julia, and his cousin’s ex-girlfriend, Ruth. The moral tug-of-war between Qualley’s seductive allure and Henwick’s earnest affability creates quite the conundrum for Beckett. He finds himself torn between his revenge-driven ambitions and the possibility of settling for less; why choose the modest life when the big time is just within arm’s reach? There’s a bit of that “Dream Big” Marty Supreme energy here, but with plenty more murder. How to Make a Killing is a classic tale of wealth as the corrupting end-all, with a bone-dry sense of gallows humor, bolstered by a hilariously deadpan Glen Powell.
Glen Powell: Master of Disguise
It’s hard to name another leading man who’s had a run like Glen Powell has in the last four years. Following a string of scene-stealing supporting roles, Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) and Fox’s Scream Queens come to mind, Powell broke into the mainstream as Hangman in Top Gun: Maverick (2022), bewitching audiences with his signature capybara smile and douchey high-school quarterback charm. He’s since become a rom-com heartthrob, starring in films like Set It Up (2018), Anyone But You (2023), and Hit Man (2023), and has led action blockbusters like Twisters (2024) and The Running Man (2025), the latter of which I found him to be somewhat miscast.
John Patton Ford makes excellent use of Powell’s paradoxical charm, making for a delightfully thorny yet captivating antihero. Becket Redfellow slots into a long line of pathetic men from the likes of Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976) to Joaquin Phoenix’s Joe Cross in Eddington (2025), deluded by arrogance in believing they deserve way more than what they have. Certain that money does, in fact, buy happiness, Becket goes undercover to infiltrate his family’s various pockets of riches, whether that be frathouses, airstrips, luxury spas, or megachurches, all while trying to avoid an ongoing FBI investigation.
Becket is smart enough to dispose of a body, but dumb enough to misquote the Bible in front of a priest. The good looks and charm are merely Becket’s weapon of choice; otherwise, he’s a loser with a chip on his shoulder.
Kind Hearts and Conclusions
For a subgenre that’s starting to feel slightly oversaturated, if not one-note, John Patton Ford’s How to Make a Killing elaborates on his simmering rage towards the late-stage capitalist machine. It’s a riveting satire of high-class culture, brazen ambition, and the gravitational pull of affluence. Culminating in an ending that both contemporizes that of Kind Hearts and Coronets and flips it on its head, How to Make a Killing’s final moments are as damning as they are deserved. Ford pulls no punches. Now, it’s not as much of a searing slap to the face as No Other Choice’s hyper-cynical conclusion. Yet, it still works as a stone-cold case of fortune favoring the wicked.
Courtesy of A24
Whereas similar movies, like the dreadfully monotonous Triangle of Sadness (2022), falter due to a lack of bite, How to Make a Killing’s breezy runtime, propulsive flair, and excellent leading performance by Glen Powell make for a whip-smart, if not slightly familiar, social class thriller. Ford proves himself as a unique voice in an era where the class divide seems to widen by the minute. His frustration isn’t just needed, it’s real and relatable. How to Make a Killing is a satisfactory step up from the jagged unevenness of Emily the Criminal, indicating that Ford has great potential to continue growing as a filmmaker. Whatever he does next, I’ll be sure to be seated for it.
★ ★ ★ 1/2
How to Make a Killing hits theaters on February 20!
Release Date: February 20, 2026.
Directed by John Patton Ford.
Screenplay by John Patton Ford.
Based on Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by Roy Horniman.
Produced by Graham Broadbent & Pete Czernin.
Executive Producers: Glen Powell, Ron Halpern, Ben Knight, Anna Marsh, Diarmuid McKeown, & Joe Naftalin.
Main Cast: Glen Powell, Margaret Qualley, Jessica Henwick, Bill Camp, Zach Woods, Topher Grace, Ed Harris, Bianca Amato, Raff Law, & Sean Cameron Michael.
Cinematographer: Todd Banhazl.
Composer: Emile Mosseri.
Editor: Harrison Atkins.
Production Company: Blueprint Pictures.
Distributor: A24 (North America) & StudioCanal (International).
Runtime: 105 minutes.
Rated R.
