I Care A Lot (2021 | USA | 118 minutes | J Blakeson)
Netflix has its share of great (or aspiring to be great) cinema — e.g., Roma, The Irishman, maybe even Mank — but as nice as it is that they indulge the occasional auteur with commercially questionable projects, their great gift to the world may be the Good Enough Netflix Movie. Light yet engaging, well-paced, an amount of star power, maybe a bit of an edge, and a grab bag of genres that shift every half hour to comfortably disappear two hours of quality time on your couch. J. Blakeson’s I Care A Lot falls into the latter category: it opens as a dark comedy about swindling old people, morphs a few times into a mystery, a heist, and a violent revenge thriller, before coming full circle. But throughout the ever-shifting tone, it remains a constant showcase for Rosamund Pike.
The film kicks off with a breezy tour of the guardian-industrial-complex: a web of courts, doctors, and elder care facilities with Pike’s cool, sleekly-attired, Marla as the apex predator positioned at the center. She and her lover/partner Fran (Eiza González) have built a comfortable life for themselves by mastering a fantasy-adjacent world in which a surplus of wealthy old people are a questionable dementia diagnosis and a court order away from being parted from their money by a crafty professional caretakers. Through it all, Pike exhibits supreme control in portraying a character who’s never made to seem like anything but an awful person and it’s a pleasure to watch her slip effortlessly between modes like slipping on masks — concerned caretaker, steely negotiator, conniving striver, charming interview subject — all in service of an overwhelming determination to succeed.
The first mini-act introduces us to the mechanics of Marla’s schemes via the harvesting of a no-strings-attached “cherry” potential ward, Jennifer, a wealthy older woman with plenty of assets and no heirs played by Dianne Wiest (who makes the absolute best of her limited screen time, a frequent reprieve, and one that I’d probably lodge about a movie that had her in every frame). In quick succession a strong supporting cast (Alicia Witt as a morally questionable doctor, Isiah Whitlock Jr. as a willfully oblivious judge, Damian Young as the head of a cushy nursing home) come to mutually-beneficial agreements in service of getting Jennifer out of her house, into a suite at the facility, and far away from the assets that Marla expertly and immediately begins to liquidate.
From here the story could’ve easily become a cat-and-mouse game between prisoner and prey, but it takes a pretty hard turn with the arrival of Peter Dinklage and a menacing mobster and Chris Messina as his gaudy lawyer as parties with a particular interest in Marla’s enterprise. It’s truly a movie that benefits from So Many Good People in the cast; so it’s fun to see Messina hamming it up and Dinklage shedding the Westeros accent and Medieval Times wardrobe for something equally ridiculous, if not more modern (plus, he shows off his skills on the rings, which is just a wild flex for no apparent reason). As these newcomers arrive on the scene and threaten her sweet operation, it becomes a carousel of genres as an immovable object faces an irresistible force.
Given that the film was based on real stories of nefarious conservatorships gone awry, one gets the sense that Blakeson has no intention of making any of the characters in this morass seem even marginally likable or redeemable. Pike is up to the task, making a feast of a role as an insatiable striver. Even as the plot spins dangerously close to going off the rails — often relying on a lack of competence that’s frankly uncharacteristic of either antagonist — she holds the whole enterprise together. A desire to see all of these wretched people get their comeuppance might leads to some stumbles toward the end, but it still makes for a thoroughly entertaining watch that’s satiates a craving without being completely mindless empty calorie viewing. I hope this appraisal doesn’t damn with faint praise. Making a couple hours zip by on a weeknight is exactly why I pay my Netflix bill every month.
I Care A Lot is available on Netflix. (Cover image, courtesy Netflix)