I Care a Lot

Rosamunde Pike plays a ruthless caretaker who cons old ladies. That's the start of the story. Quite a promising start, BUT...

The bad: soon into the story, several plot turns were not very credible. And more and more plot turns afterwards became increasingly NOT CREDIBLE AT ALL, to the point that I just couldnt take it seriously any more.

This movie is not meant to be a full on comedy, perhaps it was meant to be a dark kind of humor, but even then there still needs to be some sort of a credibility to the story. Unfortunately there was NONE.

Not any good? The start is good. The acting by Dianne Wiest is excellent. Rosamund Pike however fails at portraying a believable character, because the plot and dialogue are simply completely SILLY and UNBELIEVABLE.

The main character is unspeakably evil and the writer/director spends the whole movie glorifying her. I've never seen a movie that made me Physically I'll before.

First let me acknowledge the acting of Rosamund Pike as Marla Grayson. I have never hated a character as much as Marla Grayson. Up there with Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas.

It is only worth watching for Rosamund Pike alone.

Rosamund Pike's gleefully ruthless performance makes this film watchable. Peter Dinklage is excellent in his role as well and is a good foil for Pike's character. This film is pretty much always moving and entertaining, it just runs into some real lack of believability near the end. The entire premise is a bit shaky to believe, but the ending really goes overboard. It's also pretty hard to root for anyone in this movie because all the characters are so horrible and not super fleshed out. This film is worth a watch for the performances, just don't expect to feel hopeful about humanity after.

The title of "I Care a Lot" is meant to be ironic, since the woman it's about, a professional ward and guardian for the elderly played by Rosamund Pike, uses her business as a way to bilk vulnerable people out of their assets. But it ended up being doubly ironic, because it also applies to the feelings I had watching it. Everyone in this movie is so vile that I didn't care about any of them.

Except for Dianne Wiest. I did care about her. She plays the mom of a Russian mafia boss and the latest victim of Pike's scheme, the one who sets the plot of the film in motion. Wiest is a sweetheart, and she was no nice to Kevin Bacon in "Footloose," and she has a brief moment where she puts Pike's character in a bad-ass chokehold, which is what I wanted to do to her, that she had me really rooting for her. I also found myself rooting for her son, the mafia boss, played by Peter Dinklage, and that tells you something right there about how morally vacuous this movie is. The Russian Mafia boss is the good guy. Let me repeat that. The Russian Mafia boss is the good guy. Ok, so he cares more about reclaiming some stolen diamonds than he does his stolen mom, but still. The terrible things he's probably done all happen offscreen, so we can pretend that he's basically nice.

Pike clearly has a ball with this role, and it's a huge testament to her abilities as an actress that she could make this movie even as watchable as it is. But I don't know what I was supposed to take away from this film. I felt extremely anxious and shaky watching it. I just wanted really bad things to happen to her and her partner because they're so deplorable. I wanted them to be tortured and killed, because people as awful as they are deserve to be punished for their awfulness. But I felt really bad being made to feel that way, and that's the only thing this movie made me feel.

The movie is pretty poorly written too, but it's so snappy and admittedly entertaining while in the middle of watching it that it's not obvious how poorly it's written until after you've had a chance to mull it over afterwards. I mean seriously, would a Russian Mafia boss (who, by the way, is the good guy, or did I already mention that?) be this inept at killing not one but two women who, no matter how smart and ruthless they might be, still have literally zero experience dealing with Russian Mafia bosses?

Rosamund Pike really needs to jump back into a period gown and do another Jane Austen movie where she gets to be gentle and sweet because otherwise I'm going to be too terrified of her to ever watch her in a movie again.

Grade: B-