I Care a Lot premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last September and received rave reviews and now it's finally being released on Amazon Prime in the UK. I Care a Lot is a sharp and tightly written darkly comic thriller that has you gripped right the way through.
Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) brings immense charisma and character to Marla Grayson, a professional court-appointed guardian who rips off and steals from all her elderly wards. Marla cunningly, and most importantly, legally, gets appointed as a retiree's guardian by getting help from their doctor to say they aren't fit to look after themselves. Having done this, she'll seize all their assets and belongings, raking in the money. However, things don't go to plan with Jennifer Peterson (Academy Award winner Dianne Wiest), a wealthy senior with no living relatives, when an explosive gangster played by Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones) starts getting involved and threatening Marla and her business partner/lover Fran (Baby Driver's Eiza González). Things start getting dangerous for Marla, but she refuses to give in and ups her game to take on Dinklage's gangster head-on.
I Care a Lot is a fast-paced, stylish thriller film that gets straight into it right from the get-go and it's actually very funny despite the heartlessness of many of its main characters. Even though the film is full of such horrible characters, it's fiendishly clever and entertaining and it really has you fully invested, desperate to see what happens to our characters next. It's such a fun, engrossing film and you can't help but enjoy every single second of this wonderful film.
Rosamund Pike is tremendous as Marla Grayson, bringing a real iciness to the character in what's probably her best role since David Fincher's Gone Girl in 2014. Despite playing such a cold-blooded person, her performance is electrifying and really adds such a spark to such a tightly written and smart film. Peter Dinklage is also great at providing such fire and gusto to the gangster trying to take Jennifer Peterson out of Grayson's icy hands.
This is a film that's full of really well-edited sequences that leave you gasping at the extent of Grayson's cold-heartedness and Pike's performance just brings a level of sleekness to the point that Marla does all these horrible things, but they're presented so intelligently and stylishly that you almost forget how cruel the film's main character really is.
I Care a Lot is a fast-paced, tightly written thriller film about cruel people and yet it's a joy to watch. Ripping off old people has never been so much fun!
Dir: J Blakeson
Scr: J Blakeson
Cast: Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage, Eiza González, Dianne Wiest
Prd: J Blakeson, Michael Heimler, Teddy Schwarzman, Ben Stillman
DOP: Doug Emmett
Music: Marc Canham
Country: USA
Year: 2020
Runtime: 118 minutes
I Care a Lot is streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime in the U.K. from February 19th.
