I Care a Lot

Written and Directed by J Blakeson

Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage, Eiza González, Dianne Wiest, Chris Messina, Alicia Witt, Damian Young, Isiah Whitlock Jr.

Marla Grayson (Pike) is a con woman who runs an old age care facility. She along with her girlfriend Fran (González) find wealthy older individuals through their Dr associate (Witt) and take power of attorney over them through deceiving a sympathetic judge (Whitlock Jr), and take control of their assets, and almost imprison them in their care facility.

When they take control of Jennifer Peterson (Wiest), a never married, childless woman who is beginning to show ‘signs’ of dementia, little do they realise that she is not who they think she is. When people start asking after her, a game of cat and mouse begins between Marla, and the Russian mob boss Dinklage, who is looking for… his mother!

Ok ‘black comedy/thriller’ has some sound moments, but ultimately it struggles to really find the right ratio of what genre it wants to be.

The performances are fairly decent, with Pike stealing the show as the antihero protagonist. The native British actress does a flawless American accent, and she is believable as the ruthless and unredeemable Marla.

Dinklage, who is supposed to be the coldblooded mob boss, comes across a little soft, and I’m not sure why. He never really felt like a worthy opponent to Marla, despite how much she deserved one. There was some ‘action’ that occurs between them, but while the idea was okay, the execution was a little underwhelming.

A problem I had with the script was that the second half of the film, tried too hard to make Marla a sympathetic character, where she didn’t really deserve it.

There is a solid score by Marc Canham, which plays throughout the film and elevates the tension throughout the film.

This wasn’t a letdown of a film, but I thought it could have been executed a little better such as Wiest not being so underused, more about the Judge that sides with Marla – was he in on it?

3/5