I Care a Lot

On one hand, the core conceit – about elderly people suffering thanks to crooks and legal loopholes – is upsetting and infuriating on the surface. But Blakeson puts such a colorful, over-the-top sheen on it, plus lets Pike and Dinklage loose on each other, that you can’t help but be entertained by the criminal carnage and extreme shenanigans.

This contest of wicked wills is a vibrant, penetrating Pandora's Box of predicaments and likeable yet evil central characters, played with satirical skill by Rosamund Pike and Peter Dinklage.

I Care a Lot is notable for its colorful supporting and featured roles — Chris Messina as a mob lawyer, Peter Dinklage as a Russian mobster and Eiza Gonzalez as Marla’s girlfriend. But the main attraction is Pike, who doesn’t try to make us like her. She commits to the character’s nature and holds us with her honesty, her intensity and her unmistakable pleasure in getting to play someone appalling.

Some of the film’s punchy dialogue pops us on the nose now and again with its Themes (specifically its notes on sexism and the American Dream), but if you’re willing to look past that and a contrived half-hour detour, I Care A Lot is a savvy and wicked endeavor peppered with personality.

A film in which every single character is despicable, but some are more despicable than others, could have run into a sympathy problem. Yet thanks to J. Blakeson’s zippy direction and a chillier-than-thou lead performance from Rosamund Pike, the movie is immensely watchable. Just not especially memorable.

I Care a Lot wants to race along like a caper movie; it wants to sting like a satire. But it often winds up fighting itself, paralyzed by its own toxin.

I defer to no one in my admiration for Ms. Pike and her fellow cast members, but it’s no fun watching them soldier on through this heavy-handed and mean-spirited charade. I Care a Lot is a good title for the film that might have been. In the film that is, you can’t find anyone to care about.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

"I Care a Lot" (2020, soft R, 2 hrs, Netflix) soft R rating for lesbian intimacies and incessant vaping. This film shows how court-appointed guardianship can be abused when certain trustees go rogue for financial benefit. "Marla Grayson" (Rosamund Pike) stars as the sociopathic anti-protag who perpetuates a fraud on a nice old lady who happens to have connections to "people that care". "Roman Lunyov" (Peter Dinklage) is one of them but just when you think he's handled the Grayson problem you get the twist. So the final half hour is "who's going to prevail, Marla or Roman?" The answer to that, of course, is a serious spoiler, but it is an outcome that I did not guess because it's so rare of one. But you have to stay to the very end because even that twist gets another, more satisfying one - enjoy.

The actors' performances are good, and the story had real potential. That being said, the writing left a lot to be desired and it ended up falling into a lot of cliche and implausible moments that were just trying to get you from one scene to the next. Criticisms aside, I think it is still worth watching if you like the actors, and you aren't prone to caveman meltdowns when there are LGBTQ characters in films.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]