Too often, a show or movie buckles under its own promise. Writer and director J Blakeson's I Care a Lot looks like a guaranteed good time, an unexpected thriller starring a steely Rosamund Pike, but the end result feels incomplete. Instead of fleshing out its characters and arc too much or too little, I Care a Lot falls somewhere in the middle, leaving us itching for more but also hoping for less.
Pike plays Marla Grayson, a court-appointed guardian who targets elderly charges, sends them to care facilities, and exploits their assets. When she goes after elusive "cherry" (no stems, no strings attached) Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest), she finds herself up against immense and foreboding power as her crime boss son Roman (Peter Dinklage) fights to get her back.
The plot itself is captivating, based on real news stories that captured Blakeson's interest. For the first two acts — heck, for the first 100 minutes — I Care a Lot is propulsive and gripping, if a little repetitive. It plays out like a heist thriller with various attempts from both sides to acquire the prize or escape capture. Pike's mastery of sinister calm puts the film on her back, buoyed by Marc Canham's musical score that takes us back to The Social Network in the best way possible.
Image: Seacia Pavao / Netflix
Yet I Care a Lot fails to make you actually care for anyone in it. The film's emotional peak is watching Jennifer ripped from her home and independence, and that occurs within the first 20 minutes. The sentimental core is ostensibly Marla and Fran's relationship, but most of the time we spend with Fran she is a textbook sidekick. She exists to humanize Marla, but the film never successfully pins down what makes this character tick. At one point she talks about wanting to be obscenely wealthy, but that's long after firmly establishing herself as a sociopath, then leaving us to ponder exactly what motivates this person for the film's prolonged remainder.
Is this a film about ambition? Victimhood? Money? Power? Is it a film about women perpetuating dangerous behavior and one person weaponizing her career and appearance to profit off that? It is, in turns, all of these, yet never with the kind of full-throated gusto that would leave a viewer speechless. You don't feel yanked around by the tone because its strength is inconsistent.
Dinklage is also enjoying himself, working off a two-dimensional character whose specifics are also left to the imagination. His role as ruthless criminal with a soft spot is sometimes played for laughs, though the film's humor lands roughly amid high-tension and shock-value moments. Chris Messina makes a magnificent impression in his too-short turn as Roman's shark of a lawyer, chewing the absolute life out of his first scene with Pike and leaving us starving for more of that kind of crackle.
I Care a Lot could leave a much stronger impression by ending about 15 minutes before it actually does — and even then it goes in circles a fair amount prior to that point. One moment the ball is in Marla's court, then Roman's, then back again. The finale is a head scratcher that somehow lowers stakes which balloon steadily throughout the film, and you're left thinking about individual moments and performances rather than the whole; those separate pieces are great, but the net result is just fine. But it's easy to fall hard when you set high stakes, and we still get plenty of thrills throughout to satisfy that weekend popcorn movie itch.
I Care a Lot is now streaming on Netflix.
Follow Mashable SEA on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
