I half care
“I Care a Lot” takes the anti-capitalist screed genre to a new extreme: ruthlessly robbing grannies.
Rosamund Pike plays Marla, a woman who works as a court-appointed guardian for elderly people who either have no family or whose relatives cannot take care of them. It’s an easy, if soulless, gig. Once her wards die, she gets to keep their cash. Marla makes it even more unethical by bribing doctors to testify under oath that some older patients are worse off than they are, forcing them into her grubby clutches.
“Playing fair is a joke invented by rich people to keep the rest of us poor,” she says, in a calm-but-threatening voice. “You’re not good people. There’s no such thing as good people.”
Perhaps, but to recap: Marla makes her living by lying to seniors, waiting till they die and then pocketing their money. Is there such a thing as evil people?
Up to this point, director J Blakeson’s movie is a sharp satire of how society treats old folks, but it loses its punch when she takes on a well-to-do new ward, Jennifer (Dianne Wiest). Marla forces the woman from her beautiful house and into an elder care home where she’s not allowed any visitors. But Jennifer secretly has a son who’s in hiding . . . because he’s a Russian mafioso (Peter Dinklage). He flexes his dangerous muscles to rescue Mamushka.
The promising satire then shifts into a typical thriller with bloody shoot-outs, druggings, tazings and a car plummeting off a cliff. That business wears thin fast. “I Care a Lot” is almost two separate films, and I much prefer the first one.
Pike, who’s nominated for a Golden Globe for her role (putting this in the “comedy or musical” category is a stretch), is well cast here. She brings along those vacant “Gone Girl” expressions that mask a killer instinct. But there’s not much she can do when the film becomes a loathsome grudge match of Pike versus criminal Dinklage.
How are we supposed to choose between a grave robber and a Russian mob boss? Who cares?
Running time: 118 minutes. Rated R (language throughout and some violence). On Netflix. — Johnny Oleksinski