I didn't really care enough

We've seen a few "new release" movies via Netflix or HBO lately and I'll probably get around to a couple more of them over the next few days, but this evening we watched I Care A Lot, which is a film written, directed, and produced by J. Blakeson, whose most notable credit prior to this was probably as the writer of Descent Part 2. That isn't an attempt to demean Blakeson. Everyone has to start somewhere. It's more like mild praise that someone can be involved with only their fourth feature film and be, essentially, running the whole show. The plot revolves around a woman, Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) who also runs her own show, which is basically running the lives of others. She's a professional guardian for the elderly who has a whole racket set up, from the doctor who gives false testimony about the capability of her patients to the care facility director who treats them any way Marla wants them treated to the various vendors who are eager to be involved with her selling their assets, auctioning their possessions, and draining their accounts. Marla's voiceover monologue at the start of the film eventually boils down her life's philosophy: There are predators and prey and she's a predator. That's until she steals the life of someone connected to even larger predators, which is where things get complicated, just like they do out in the wild.

Rosamund Pike is genuinely great in her role. She's completely in control and handles every situation with aplomb. She still has the icy void where human compassion and morality would be that she wielded in Gone Girl to great effect, except that in this role she's not erratic. She's just ruthless, which is every bit as threatening. Dianne Wiest is her usual capable self as one of Marla's wards (read: victims) and Peter Dinklage makes an appearance as the eventual seeming foil to Marla's business. The script is kind of funny and although the story drags a bit in the middle, we're mostly kept in a constant forward rhythm without much need to stop and consider the plausibility of all of this. There's also a small turn by Isiah Whitlock, Jr. ("Sheeeeeeit!") as the judge who's only too quick to respond to all of Marla's legal motions. So, it's a decent film, but I can't say that it's one I would've rushed to shell out $10 for at the theater.

For example, the tropes were kind of obvious. Marla's attitude about success and failure is clearly a stab at the current late-stage capitalism environment. There's nothing wrong with that, but it felt like it was delivered clumsily with lines like: "Wealthy enough to use money like a weapon. Like real rich people do. That's what I want." From most perspectives, Marla would've already appeared to be quite wealthy and using said wealth to extract even more from victims that the state had officially declared to be unable to defend themselves. She already has as large an arsenal as anyone needs. Is her obliviousness to that another example of the high six-figure salary earners who consider themselves "middle class" because they feel like they're broke after paying for the private school, the third or fourth car, and the second home? Is that the swipe that was taken here or was it even less subtle than that? If this was supposed to be about how the system takes advantage of those who aren't rich enough to manipulate it, no one in this film fit that bill, from Marla to the wealthy victims she was draining to the coterie of enablers she had nestled around herself, who were negotiating for stock options instead of a way to feed their families. It was a pretty glamorous precipice from which to be shouting about how money is the problem.

A central facet to Marla's character is not only that she's a winner, but also that she's a winner in a man's world. She points out to her girlfriend, Fran (Eiza González) that she's dealt with men like Dinklage's character before and she'll deal with him the way she does any other man. That's fine and it's a point that unfortunately still needs to be made (e.g. that women are just as capable and, apparently, just as capable of being ruthless) in modern society, but it's hammered home in that speech to Fran when it's already been made obvious when dealing with attorneys, care home directors, the relatives of her victims and pretty much anyone else that gets in her way. The point has been made. Making it again only weakens the delivery, but this film does that repeatedly with most of its themes. Also, one wonders what message is being delivered when it's shown that the vast majority of those in Marla's unethical and illegal network are, in fact, women already in positions of power.

Also, Dinklage has unfortunately become typecast. This is not a reworking of his role as Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones or Finbar McBride in The Station Agent or even Bolivar Trask in X-Men: Days of Future Past... but in a way it kind of is. Whenever people seem to need a somewhat moody, introspective, occasionally sensitive guy, he's first on the list. In this case, he's playing a mobster who's as capable as a Tyrion but also subject to temper tantrums that fit the character (and his usual role) not at all. We go from his quiet, measured, stare-into-your-soul contemplation to fits of pique and back again. I think that was supposed to be part of the black comedy aspect to the film, except that it wasn't really funny so much as jarring and other moments ("Is that my smoothie?") deliver that kind of absurdist veil over very dark reality much better. His direct encounters with Pike really only serve to make him one more in her endless train of victims, whether directly via the story or implicitly by their scene chemistry, and one kind of gets the feeling that we've seen this before. Is it different because she's lording it over a mobster as easily as she does a frail 80-year-old? I'm unconvinced.

So, yeah. Not a bad film. Certainly worth the couple hours to sit and watch it. But I think there was more there that could've been delivered with, perhaps, another hand on the tiller, whether writing, directing, or producing. The messages are all there and the characters are interesting enough to follow (Tricia complained at one point that "There are no good guys here!", which was, I believe, part of the point.) but the final package is just slightly off.