I CARE A LOT

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

Let’s start with the things I love about I Care a Lot, now streaming on Netflix, as there’s a few. I love that three of the four principal characters are women, including the protagonist. I love that said women are just as shady as characters as any of the “Russian mob” men they get mixed up with: we need more nuanced woman villains! I love that Diane Wiest is cast in a key part, as we don’t get to see her enough.

On the other hand, we still don’t get to see Diane Wiest enough, even in this movie, and I don’t love that. She features more prominently in the first half than in the second, and I spent too much time hoping her character would be the one to get the last laugh in the end, only to be disappointed. Jennifer Peterson is a fascinating character, and I wish writer-director J Blakeson had given her more agency. She’s really the only character in this movie who deserves to take charge of her own fate, and she winds up being the only one denied it.

I’ll still credit Blakeson for how much agency he gives Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike, effectively playing her as an unsettlingly amoral person), regardless of how villainous she is. This is a woman running a practice that is legal but, to put it euphemistically, “morally dubious” as they mark elderly people to be deemed unable to care for themselves. Marla gets courts to grand her guardianship over these senior citizens, places them into assisted living facilities, and sells off all their assets.

I’ll even credit Blakeson for casting Peter Dinklage as Roman Lunyov, her most direct nemesis and Jennifer Peterson’s mob boss son. Nothing in the script indicates that Roman is a little person, and nothing in the dialogue is changed to make a single reference to his size. He just exists as another person here, albeit a clearly evil, criminal one who wields a lot of power. In someone else’s hands, they might make his lifelong resentment of being marginalized a part of his psychological portrait—it certainly was in Game of Thrones—but here, it’s completely incidental, and only Dinklage’s performance has any relevance to his presence in the cast. (And he’s very good.)

On the other hand, I have somewhat more mixed feelings about the choice to make Marla, and her partner/lover/accomplice (Eiza González), lesbians. Sure, this detail is also incidental and does not hinge on the plot in any way. Still, the slight sting of history remains, where far too many films have made their most horrible characters gay.

All that said, for much of I Care a Lot, we are treated to a riveting game of cat and mouse between Roman and Marla, who surprises him by being every bit his match. This is a surprise to him because he is part of a very powerful mob family, and makes the mistake of underestimating Marla as a small-time crook. Marla is an incredibly dynamic, intelligent woman who refuses to be intimidated by the men who assume they can easly shut her down. This makes her an unusually compelling character, even as an awful person herself, especially as Rosamund Pike plays her.

And, no disrespect to Peter Dinklage—who is reliably great—I just wish that cat-and-mouse game had rather been between Marla and Diane Wiest’s Jennifer. This is one of the problems with I Care a Lot, as even though it gives women (good or bad) far more credit than most movies do, at the same time it gives the elderly no credit or agency whatsoever. In this universe, every old person is helpless and vulnerable, a potential victim for prey. Even when Jennifer begins to realize, and deviously delight in the fact that Marla has gotten in over her head by involving her son, that remains the context: she is dependent on her son. I want to see the movie where Jennifer is the clever one.

I suppose you could argue it’s just too easy not to be happy with these things, especially when it’s a movie that has so much going for it—and, I Care a Lot has a lot. It does make several narrative leaps of faith over probability, but I won’t spend much time nitpicking over that; what crime thriller doesn’t? I can say this much for the film: it delivers on the promise of the genre, being plenty suspenseful, and sprinkled with dark humor, throughout. I used to gauge whether I’d recommend a movie based on whether I thought it was worth going to the theater to see. Would this one have been? It would have for me; I’m just not sure it would be for others. Lucky for you, you can already fire it right up from your couch. From there, it’s plenty worth your time.

Strong, nuanced women, all of them awful . . . it’s great!

Overall: B