The new A24 movie, How to Make a Killing, places Glen Powell as Becket, a man of humble origins seeking to claim the inheritance from his wealthy maternal family. The story, narrated in the form of a confession, leaves doubts about the veracity of the protagonist's account. Beyond the thriller, the film examines class tensions, social resentment, and the sense of entitlement that permeates current capitalism.
Rendering Ambition: Narrative as a Development Engine 💻
Becket's process to infiltrate the elite can be compared to the development of complex software. His account is the source code, a base that compiles into a perceived reality, but which may contain 'bugs' of manipulation. Like a programmer debugging his creation, Becket adjusts his story for each 'user' (the other characters), optimizing its emotional performance to achieve his ultimate goal: root access to the family fortune.
Debugging the American Dream: Error 404 'Simple Life' Not Found? 🐛
The movie poses, through Ruth's character, an uncomfortable question for any ambitious person: what if having a quiet life is enough? It's like suggesting in an overclocking forum that, perhaps, the system's default performance is fine. Becket acts like that user who, after seeing a luxury benchmark, formats his existing hard drive to install an elite OS, completely ignoring that his old system worked without blue screens.