Even before you see her blond bob, you know instantly that Rosamund Pike’s newest star vehicle will find her working in the same vein of coolly ruthless savagery that she mined so brilliantly in Gone Girl. That much is clear from her opening voiceover, which finds the crisply talented actor once again ditching her British lilt for a capable American accent, and which concludes with her declaring, “I am a fucking lioness.” It’s an accurate if unnecessary introduction; one glare from her cold-blue eyes or one puff from her vape pen, and it’s plain that Pike’s Marla Grayson is a lethal predator. She plays for keeps, even when the game is other people’s lives.
This description might sounds like the template for a dark and provocative study of sociopathy, but I Care a Lot isn’t especially interested in digging into the pathologies of its protagonist. It isn’t interested in much of anything, really, beyond treating viewers to a rollicking good time with bad people. And this, it mostly does. Written and directed with slick snap by J. Blakeson, it coasts amiably on the gifts of its cast and the jolts of its pulp, untroubled by its own vacuity. Small wonder Marla is its hero.
Even if I Care a Lot is thematically dubious, it exhibits real vigor in detailing its amoral universe, a land of schemers and grifters who buff their sheen of respectability while secretly playing down and dirty. Cinema is littered with corrupt public servants, but Marla’s venality is uniquely chilling; she isn’t a cop or judge or politician but a court-appointed guardian, entrusted to look after vulnerable elderly citizens who suffer from dementia or other ailments requiring long-term care. The catch, of course, is that most of Marla’s wards aren’t mentally incompetent at all; instead, she maneuvers within a ring of fellow opportunists—including an enterprising doctor (Alicia Witt), a cagey administrator (Damian Young), and a judge (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) who’s less conniving than clueless—to hospitalize the aged against their will, bilking them of their assets in the process.
How dare she! you might exclaim. To which she’d likely respond: This is America. (Specifically, the putative location is Massachusetts, though regional geography is among the film’s unconcerns, thereby sparing actors and audiences alike from exaggerated New England inflections.) In life and at the movies, we have a rich history of bureaucratic malfeasance, a patchwork of loopholes happily exploited by the unscrupulous. But while the quality of elder care in this country is undeniably a serious issue, Blakeson makes no pretense of addressing it seriously. Mounting any sort of actual argument would spoil the fun.
And for its first 45 minutes or so, I Care a Lot is a delirious romp. Blakeson may operate entirely on the surface—his prior efforts include the twisty kidnapping thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed and the ill-regarded young-adult adaptation The 5th Wave, along with the dreadful Guy Fawkes miniseries Gunpowder—but he understands momentum, and he has a strong eye for sleazy glamour; an early montage that finds Marla and her professional/romantic partner (Eiza González) celebrating their latest fraud glows with neon intensity. Blakeson also showcases an atypical appreciation for wardrobe; for a contemporary movie, the costumes in I Care a Lot are unusually snazzy, dressing Pike in a fire-engine dress or a canary-yellow pantsuit. (When she eagerly disrobes, I found myself worried for the clothes, until I wasn’t.) By the time Chris Messina shows up as an unctuous attorney in a purple tie with matching pocket square, you’re liable to press pause and go Google Prada’s latest line.
Messina, by the way, co-authors the film’s finest scene, a sizzling tête-à-tête in which he and Pike flash fangs as well as contrived smiles. It’s an electric conversation, but while it propels the movie’s plot—in bamboozling her latest victim, an apparent loner played by Dianne Wiest, Marla has inadvertently ruffled some very powerful feathers —it also harbingers its disintegration. From this point forward, I Care a Lot transitions from a gleeful study of avarice into a far more conventional crime thriller.
This isn’t a problem in itself. Straightforward capers can still be compelling, and this one happens to feature Peter Dinklage as an unhinged, expatriated Russian mob boss; watching him constantly attempt to suppress his maniacal fury is no small reward. Blakeson manages to inject some flair into the proceedings, whether it’s setting a stock interrogation sequence in an ominous junkyard suffused with dull red light, or putting a distaff spin on the car scene from North by Northwest.
Yet despite its flavor, the movie’s suspense elements don’t really work. Marla is a fascinatingly ugly character for the way she combines her considerable wiles with an extraordinary contempt for human decency; her sudden transformation into a run-and-gun action hero diminishes her particular brand of Machiavellian genius. Beyond that, the film’s set pieces—a pair of escapes from certain death, another pair of kidnappings in parking garages—are both ludicrous and oddly inert, lacking the cinematic verve that Blakeson brings to more functional dialogue scenes. I Care a Lot is never remotely credible, but in its first half, it at least persuasively conjures its own twisted world; once it shifts into the familiar frenzy of life-or-death warfare, its absurdity becomes harder to bear.
Pike, however, remains intensely watchable throughout. A scene where Marla strolls into a gas station before stripping down, calmly assessing the calamity of her situation, plays like MacGyver by way of Kill Bill; shortly beforehand, she lets loose a ferocious scream that’s less an outburst of anger than a gesture of irritation, as though she’s baffled that things aren’t going her way. She’s no Amazing Amy, but Pike still effortlessly holds your gaze and secures your investment, even if this movie—whether it involves making a meaningful point or telling a plausible story—couldn’t possibly care less.
Grade: B-
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.