Pike is scary good in Netflix’s ‘I Care a Lot’
“I Care a Lot” is one big fattening hunk of dessert. You know it’s bad for you even while you can’t stop enjoying it.
Typically, it’s a problem in a movie if you can’t find anyone to root for. But what if you can root against everyone? That seems to level the playing field, at least in writer and director J Blakeson’s wacko movie, streaming Friday on Netflix. It’s not great by any stretch. As a movie it’s just sort of middling good.
As a way to while away a couple of hours? It’s a lot of fun, of the morally bankrupt sort.
Rosamund Pike plays Marla, a miserable human. She is a guardian, swooping in on whatever vulnerable person she can find, taking over their lives, making their decisions, handling their care and, while she’s at it, robbing them blind.
‘I Care a Lot’ centers on a scam going sideways
She and Fran (Eiza González), her partner in life and in crime, know all the angles, whether it’s paying off doctors to alert them to possible marks or knowing just how to play a friendly judge (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) in family court.
They find their way to Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest), a “cherry” – that is, a rich person with no known family. Jennifer is not in decline, seemingly, but that’s nothing a crooked doctor’s report can’t fix. The next thing you know they’re taking over Jennifer’s life and depositing her in the care facility they’re in cahoots with.
Big mistake.
Jennifer, it turns out, may or may not be the mother of Roman Lunyov (Peter Dinklage), a mob boss with a regimented lifestyle designed to keep him calm, it seems. When he learns what’s happened to his mother, that calm is tested. And then shattered.
Blakeson turns the film into a kind of morally bankrupt chess match between Marla and Roman. They’re both exceptionally good at playing this kind of game. (Hearty constitutions that protect against near-certain death help, too.)
Roman’s lawyer (Chris Messina) pays Marla a visit. He’s a delightful weasel making veiled threats – you’ve got to love a good mob lawyer, at least in movies. He wants to pay Marla off to surrender Jennifer’s care for $150,000.
No dice. She’ll take $5 million, thank you.
Rosamund Pike carries the Netflix movie as Marla, a ‘lioness’
Roman’s not going for that. Each side makes increasingly bold and dangerous (and narratively dubious) moves against the other. It’s especially fun when Marla and Roman face off in person.
Dinklage is effective as a ruthless mobster who loves his (maybe) mother and the diamonds in her safe-deposit box. Wiest is always good, but aside from a couple of showdowns with Marla she doesn’t have a lot to do other than be frustrated by her circumstances.
That showdown, though. I’m a sucker for the “I know, and you know that I know, and I know that you know that I know, and you know that I know that you know that I know” scene.
But really it’s Pike who carries the film. She makes Marla fascinating. Are you a lamb, someone asks at the start? I’m a (expletive) lioness, she says.
If anything, she sold herself short. Pike excels at fake sincerity, which is kind of the same as lying effectively but not really. She can schmooze a judge and threaten a gangster and she sells both with equal authenticity. She’s scary even when she’s smiling – especially when she’s smiling.
We don’t know a lot about Marla, other than her effectiveness as a swindler. She tells Jennifer, after events have escalated, that what’s making her mad is that Jennifer’s side isn’t playing by the rules. (Exactly how would spoil things.) She wants to cheat fairly, which may not make much sense to most of us but makes perfect sense in this twisted world.
Honor among thieves? Hardly. There’s a telling bit where Marla tells Roman that she’s more than willing to sell out. The price just has to be right.
Blakeson seems to be trying to make a statement about predatory caregivers and guardians and the legal system that props them up. But those are really just passing glances, eventually abandoned for the thrill of the battle. He just can’t help himself.
There’s a lot of that going around in “I Care a Lot.”