I Care A Lot was previously reviewed at TIFF 2020. Available on Netflix in the U.S and Amazon Prime Video internationally.
PLOT: An amoral legal conservator (Rosamund Pike) exploits the elderly for her financial gain, but makes a mistake when her latest target (Dianne Wiest) turns out to be connected to a deadly gangster (Peter Dinklage).
REVIEW: Rosamund Pike is always so good when she’s bad. And boy oh boy, is her character in I Care A Lot the kind of role she can sink her teeth right into. Recently, in the place I come from, Quebec, there’s been a huge scandal involving elder care homes, with outbreaks of COVID-19 among the residents and various horror stories emerging in the headlines every day. It’s shone a light on the fact that some of our most vulnerable people, the elderly, are often discarded into a murky world of elder care, which I Care A Lot makes a case is a place an amoral person can clean up if they’re utterly free of scruples.
The fact that Pike’s Marla is such a venomous snake will mean that I Care A Lot plays to a more selective audience, as no one here is even remotely likable in the classic sense. Everyone’s a shark, with even Wiest’s seemingly sweet, grand-motherly Jennifer, who's snatched from her home and put in elder care without any rhyme or reason, capable of turning on you if she senses weakness. Yet, it can't be denied that this makes director J Blakeson’s film a pretty badass, delicious romp.
More than anything, if gives Pike another classic anti-heroine to play, with Marla able to turn on the fake compassion on a dime if it suits her. We see her convince a kindly judge (the great Isiah Whitlock Jr.) that she’s got everyone’s best interest in mind, while simultaneously ordering Wiest’s character to be put on a punishing physical and pharmacological regimen that leaves her a virtual zombie. What’s scarier about her is how she does everything legally, exploiting loopholes that allow her to use her elderly clients as cash cows. She treats them as assets, and when they inevitably die, she’s upset because that means she has to “cash them out”, like a stock that’s taken a downturn.
As bad as she is though, she’s an amateur next to Peter Dinklage as one of the scariest screen gangsters in years. Not one to get his hands dirty, he uses an army of lawyers (including a slimy Chris Messina) to fight his battles, and if that fails, killers will do to in a pinch. It’s a classic two-hander between them with neither having any redeeming features other than the fact that both do have one person (but only one) in their lives that they care about. For Dinklage, it’s Wiest’s character, and for Pike, it’s her lover, played by Eiza González, who's just as bad as she is in a lot of ways. No one here seems to have any moral compass at all, except maybe Whitlock’s well-meaning judge, but to everyone else, he’s just a sucker whose kindness they can exploit.
Blakeson, who also helmed the underrated The Disapearance of Alice Creed, keeps the twists and turns coming at a frantic pace. Utterly unpredictable from start to finish, it builds towards an unforgettable ending with a punishing moral. Pike and Dinklage are outstanding, and hopefully, this emerges from TIFF with a juicy deal, with the only possible thing in its way being that it’s not easy to classify in terms of genre. It’s not exactly a thriller and not exactly a comedy either. Whatever it is though, it sure is good and I had a blast watching it.