I Care a Lot

I Care a Lot
Starring Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage, Eiza Gonzalez, Dianne Wiest
Directed by J Blakeson

Ever hear the saying, "but their heart was in the right place?" That's what I think of when I think about "I Care a Lot," because the film - as a whole - is wholly a mess. A film that pivots in many different directions without landing solidly on any one thing, where the protagonist is the most insufferable, terrible excuse for a human being ever, and the bad guys are so generic and bland its like someone plucked them out of the pages of a classic mobster novel and inserted them into the film without giving them life. Yet the premise of the film is an important one, and its the reason the director wrote the screenplay in the first place: to shed light on a scam that's been plaguing senior citizens and their loved ones for years - the scam of guardianship.

Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) is a guardian of the elderly, a woman who puts senior citizens in nursing care facilities that she somehow manages to control while she keeps their loved ones from ever talking or seeing them, while she siphons off their assets for her own personal financial gain. She's incurred a lot of patients due to an unethical doctor and a judge who doesn't see through her facade despite numerous court appearances, and she finally thinks she's found the perfect mark: an elderly woman named Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest) - she has no husband, no children, no living family members, and is worth a fortune. Marla acquires guardianship over Jennifer and has her committed to the assisted living facility and sells all her personal affects, and along the way finds a safety deposit box containing a lot of diamonds.

Unbeknownst to Marla, Jennifer isn't who she appears to be, and she has some friends in high - and deadly - places. Roman Lunvov (Peter Dinklage) is the leader of a former Russian mafia has close ties to Jennifer, and wants to free her from the prison that Marla has put her in. Yet Marla is a woman who's never lost, and has no intentions on giving up her newest cash cow without a fight - which is what she gets.

Director J Blakeson wrote "I Care a Lot" after hearing stories about guardians who use unsuspecting elderly citizens and basically lock them up in a prison of sorts while they hock all their earthly possessions for their own benefit. This idea seems outlandish and impossible, but it occurs more times than you think, due to a country where senior citizens are seen as third class humans - they're seen as not being able to contribute to society, a burden on the health care system, and outdated relics of a long-forgotten time - so its easy for con men (and women) to convince doctors, judges, and elderly care physicians to just put them away in a forgotten home while they reap the financial benefits of decades worth of hard work and toil. While he does manage to get this point across, he does so in a way that feels more exploitative than what it should've been, and then halfway through the film he does a complete reversal and turns the movie into the Russian mafia stalking the con-guardian in the most buffoonish ways, like watching an unfunny episode of "Rocky & Bullwinkle."

What makes this film insufferable (along with the aforementioned fact that it tonally switches midway through), is the fact that we're supposed to be on the side of Marla Grayson, a woman who has zero redeeming qualities, who is supposed to be the hero of the film despite ripping off elderly people of their livelihoods and preventing their loved ones from ever seeing them again. While there's some anti-heroes in movies you root for (such as Loki from the MCU), you root for them because there's some spark of humanity, some hope, some sense of human decency in them to make them cheer-able. Not so with Marla. She's cold, calculating, will cut your throat in an instant to get five bucks, and acts like she's the smartest woman in the room. She's callous, heartless, and a terrible excuse for a human being. You don't root for her. You don't root for the Russian mafia that doesn't speak Russian and perform their duties as inept as if a mobster of children were in charge. You just root for the film to end.

Yet there's a spark of hope in this film, a reason why I watched it in the first place, and that is with the ever-amazing Rosamund Pike. Nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance, she plays Marla to the hilt. Everything I said previously about Marla, that's how good Pike is at her job. She makes you truly loathe and seethe with anger toward Marla, and that's something a lesser actress wouldn't be able to accomplish. Still, her performance is so profound that you can't look away even when you want to. Peter Dinklage hams up the screen as an over-acting Russian mafia boss, while Dianne Wiest plays the perfect chameleon - a quiet, nice elderly lady on the outside but a fierce, intelligent woman on the inside.

Another odd thing about the film is the overuse of brightness. Pretty much each scene is cast in vivid colorful light, which isn't something you'd think about in a film of this caliber, and maybe its a metaphor for how nice and unassuming things appear to be on the outside before finding the darkness within - but I'm probably looking way too much into it.

"I Care a Lot" is nearly an unwatchable film featuring no quality characters to really root or care for, which is in itself a testament to Rosamund Pike's impeccable performance, if you can stomach it.

The Score: C-