HOW TO MAKE A KILLING
About halfway through How to Make a Killing, a character asks Becket Redfellow: “Gun to your head, what would you do with $10 billion?” I had just been wondering the same thing. Actually, what I had been thinking was, “What does this guy actually want?” Ostensibly, yes, Becket is after money—a lot of it. His mother was disowned, but not disinherited, by her wealthy father after getting pregnant with Becket (out of wedlock, by a man of insufficient social standing), and all that stands between him and unspeakable wealth are a handful of relatives who’ve never acknowledged his existence. So some score settling is in order, and it’s satisfying to watch Becket (Glenn Powell, last seen as a charismatic killer in 2023’s delightful The Hitman) charm his way into the lives of his estranged relatives and arrange for a series of “accidents” to befall them. But by the time this question is posed, Becket is doing quite well for himself. He has persuaded one relative to give him a plum finance job, and stolen the girlfriend of another; that girlfriend, Ruth (Jessica Henwick), is the one asking the question. Becket’s response is a smirking “Why do you have a gun to my head?” This isn’t a movie about a class warrior, and while it is a movie about a charming, ever-resourceful con artist, the last act of How to Make a Killing has Becket getting outsmarted and outmaneuvered as often as he outsmarts others, and it delivers an ending that feels both appropriately clever and—while the movie isn’t concerned with fairness in the slightest—even a little just. R. CHRISTEN McCURDY. Laurelhurst, Studio One, AMC, Cinemark and Regal locations.
PILLION
The rush of first-time thrill radiates through Harry Lighton’s debut film, Pillion. If you’ve ever ridden passenger on the pillion (the back of a motorcycle), perhaps you have experienced the exhilaration and surrender of letting your body flow through the wind with zero control of the enormous force that propels your existence. This metaphor drives the gay BDSM romance, adapted from Adam Mars-Jones’ 2020 novel Box Hill: A Story of Low Self-Esteem. Pillion focuses on two members of a leather-clad motorcycle club: its leader—Ray, a man of few words brought to life by the stunningly statuesque Alexander Skarsgård—and its new initiate, Colin, an inexperienced barbershop quartet singer played by Harry Melling. Their attraction seems unfounded at first, but Colin’s penchant for devotion develops into a full-fledged situationship that broadens his world to the extent that he eventually recognizes his own value. Pillion plays out like a fetish experience. The explicit kink binds viewers’ attention while peppering in lightheartedness and humor with a feathery tickle, loosening up the bonds. Colin’s self-discovery is endearing, tender and laudable. The best subs have strong boundaries, and boundaries arise from lived experience. The art of subbing isn’t strictly obedience. Power comes from communicating limits and desires. Pillion is a hot watch with a heartbeat, much like surprise HBO stunner Heated Rivalry. R. NICOLE ECKRICH. Cinema 21 and Studio One starting Feb. 26.
THE SWEDISH CONNECTION
Sweden was not as neutral as some might think during World War II. Surrounded by Nazi-occupied countries, Sweden often acquiesced to Germany’s wishes, which is what perhaps makes low-level bureaucrat Gösta Engzell’s story worth sharing. The Holocaust’s horrors weren’t widely known outside the Third Reich’s immediate control, so as Jewish asylum cases filtered through Sweden’s system, they landed on Engzell’s lowly desk. In the Swedish-language war drama The Swedish Connection, Engzell (Henrik Dorsin) is initially hesitant to act on the Jews’ behalf, wanting to stick to the rules, but he has difficulty ignoring the mounting cases and talk of genocide. The Swedish Connection feels timely with its parallels to the United States’ selective immigration crackdown on Latino communities separating families. Engzell is not well respected and holds little power, but he uses his structural invisibility to his advantage as he finesses the system to help Jews with ties to Sweden find asylum. When more than 70,000 Jewish asylum cases are ordered to be archived by a government eager to appease Hitler, Engzell and his staff (Sissela Benn, Marianne Mörck, Jonas Malmsjö) comb the records to approve provisional passports for refugees. Their work is far from effortless, they’re afraid most of the time, and their cause is questioned constantly, but Engzell and his team persist anyway. The Swedish Connection uplifts without offering false hope. PG-13. ANDREW JANKOWSKI. Netflix.
SIRĀT
As the old saying goes, never follow a Saharan rave caravan to a second location. But that’s the snap decision a desperate father (Sergi López) makes in search of his runaway daughter. She might be at the next party, the ravers theorize, and off they truck southward through the spectacularly rugged Moroccan desert to begin Sirāt—an Oscar nominee for Best International Feature. Whether this quest is a bad decision (on everyone’s part) gets at the best and worst of Sirāt. On the one hand, there’s an unspoken poetry to how the travelers’ motivations and pasts are ambiguous—even beautifully ironic. They’re looking for a woman who may not want to be found; Luis (the father) is guided by a crusty community whose main goal is losing themselves; and this journey to hedonistic nowhere could scarcely be harder (lightly recalling William Friedkin’s Sorcerer with the sheer truck-versus-landscape treachery). But over and over, Sirāt decides it must make sense of this ambiguity, and the only way it knows how is punitive: a heavy-handed warning about tragedy’s inescapability with all the nuance of a slasher movie about teenagers who shouldn’t have partied in the woods. There’s no doubt it’s bracing and a deeply felt homage to EDM as modern, post-lingual folk music. But Sirāt is at war with itself, and its pushiest, least interesting instincts rule the day. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Living Room Theaters starting Feb. 26.
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