A “loose, loose reimagining” of Kind Hearts And Coronets does not really work
A young man, ignored by his wealthy family because they disapprove of the circumstances of his birth, decides to kill the cousins who stand between him and inheriting a fortune. It’s a catchy pitch, and you can see why Hollywood went for How To Make A Killing. Did anyone wonder if it sounded faintly familiar?
According to John Patton Ford, the writer-director of this film, this is a “loose, loose reimagining” of Kind Hearts And Coronets, the 1949 Ealing classic, in which Alec Guinness plays the eight members of the aristocratic D’Ascoyne family who are successively whacked by social climber Dennis Price.
If you’re wondering what the definition of “loose, loose reimagining” is, How To Make A Killing follows the plot and structure of the original pretty much beat by beat. It is built around a death row confession, the murders are of analogous characters, in the same order and much the same way. There is the same love triangle and the same set of plot twists.
My feelings about that started as amusement during the film itself, as I waited to see how each part of the original would be translated, then turned to outrage when I saw no acknowledgement of the original in the credits. Then I remembered that the international rip-off has a fine tradition: The Magnificent Seven and A Fistful of Dollars are both remakes of Akira Kurosawa Samurai films, and I wouldn’t want to lose either.
Sadly, this film doesn’t stand next to either of those. It’s fine, in a forgettable kind of way. I mean this literally. Three days after seeing it, I struggled to remember how I’d spent that evening. It’s a cheeseburger of a movie: enjoyable enough while you’re eating it, and gone from your mind when it’s over.
The action is moved to modern New York, with Glen Powell in the Price role. If there’s an actor capable of playing half-a-dozen loathsome Americans, Ford hasn’t found them. Instead we get perfectly passable cameos from a series of stars, culminating in Ed Harris, making a valiant effort to steal the film as the final boss, in the one bit of the movie that is actually original.
Powell is, as ever, possessed of considerable charisma, but he’s too clean cut to play a multiple murderer. Matt Damon managed to turn that quality on its head in The Talented Mr Ripley, but this is a comedy. Thinking about it, I’ve watched several films starring Powell in the last couple of years, and I’m not sure I can remember much about any of them.
The problem is that the journey across the Atlantic and forward 80 years mean parts of the Kind Hearts plot no longer really make sense. The original is a comment on England’s class system. Price’s character doesn’t simply want to be wealthy, he wants to be an aristocrat, in a way recognisable to the Britain of the 1940s. Powell only wants money. Given that he gets a high-paying job in the family bank after his first murder, it’s not clear why he carries on killing.
Likewise, in the original, Price is torn between his attraction for the upright and noble Edith and his desire for his mistress saucy Sibella, who supplies things the other woman won’t. In 2020s New York, that doesn’t really work. There is a brief attempt to address the social divides that modern America does have, with Powell looking on enviously at the wealthy failsons, but this is quickly abandoned.
There was an obvious way to update the tale of an heir rejected as unacceptable by his family that would have cut to the heart of modern American divides: make Powell’s character black.But that would have taken a braver film.
