Warning: contains spoilers
I Care a Lot is a one-woman show run by Rosamund Pike as Marla Grayson, a court-appointed guardian for incapacitated elderly people, or in her own words, a f-cking lioness. Unbeknownst to her unsuspecting elderly victims and the court, Marla and her associates are conning people out of their lives’ savings by forging medical reports on their sanity and subsequently taking control of their finances and wiping out their bank accounts.
Rosamund Pike is in total girl boss glory at all times. Her dazzling smile makes you blush and flinch a little at the same time, yet it’s impossible to look away. Her sharp blue eyes and cold, calculated movements are precise to a fault. Her impeccable blonde bob (the straightest thing about the movie) is so sharp you’d get shanked if you stood behind her in a line. Pike carries the movie from start to finish and is one of the few good reasons to watch it.
When Marla and her trusty partner Fran (criminal and otherwise) hear of Jennifer Peterson, a rich old lady with no living relatives to poke around, their pupils positively turn into giant glittering dollar signs. A corrupt doctor falsifies a medical report, Marla selflessly agrees to take on another ward, and Jennifer is whisked away to a care home.
It turns out Jennifer is in fact missed, by no less than Russian gangster/macaron-gifting son Roman Lunyov, a sleazeball nobody wants to root for. However, it is extremely fun to watch Peter Dinklage rage-eat éclairs and throw smoothies at the wall.
This quickly turns into a garden-variety battle of the sexes. Marla will stop at nothing to get rich, and Roman will go to any lengths to get his mother back. Except kill her, which he waits until the very last minute to do, and still doesn’t do it right. You’d think the Russian mafia would know to fool-proof their killing strategies. Marla somehow survives suffocation, a car crash, and drowning, and then proceeds to shake her fist at the universe for breaking a tooth.
Fran is also unkillable, by the way. I Care a Lot is trying really hard not to bury its gays. Marla and Fran serendipitously escape a gas explosion in their apartment and begin to hatch their revenge plan.
The movie makes it way too easy for two regular gals to be able to get inside police info, escape unscathed from any hostile situation, and wholly take down a gangster with multiple beefy bodyguards. Marla’s ingenious plan lands her as Roman’s guardian, unless of course, he is willing to pay her ten billion dollars. In an extremely predictable turn of events, Roman offers Marla a job instead, kick-starting her road to success.
I Care a Lot suffers from a severe lack of personality. Marla claims to be hungry for success and money, but what exactly does she do with it? Buy more vape pens? She has clearly swindled enough to be able to enjoy a moderate level of luxury at least, but we never see her enjoying her money. The only thing that shows her vanity is the journey of her broken tooth.
The movie misses a lot of opportunities in Dianne Wiest’s untapped potential as Jennifer. I would have much preferred to watch Marla and Jennifer spar in a battle of wits instead of whatever this was. Though heavily sedated, Jennifer threatens Marla with a look in her eyes that says she’s seen some things in her day. The movie often seems to be going in this direction and promises something between the two, but eventually Jennifer’s character is sidelined and forgotten about, which is disappointing.
Speaking of disappointing, the ending. Many scams later, Marla is a billionaire. On her way out from a TV interview, she’s shot and killed by the son of a former ward who died alone and unhappy. A guy who spat on Marla’s face in the first few minutes of the movie absolutely did not deserve to kill her. Why was such a high-profile billionaire frolicking around completely unprotected, anyway? And is it supposed to karmic in some way, that she finally got what was coming to her? It’s anti-climactic, unsatisfying, and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I, for one, would have loved to see Jennifer exact her own revenge on Marla.
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