I Care a Lot

[4 stars] [IMDB Link] [I Care a Lot]

It's pretty clear from the get-go that Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) has got a pretty nasty scam going. Her opening voiceover soliloquy establishes that she divides the world into "Predators and prey. Lions and lambs." And she's determined to be the former. Her lucrative business model: in league with a crooked doctor, an ex-cop girlfriend, a shady nursing home, and a complaisant judge, she gets appointed as legal guardian of elderly folk with high net worth. And proceeds to isolate them from friends and family and loot their estates.

In short, this is not a great advertisement for American elderly care.

But Marla may have made a mistake in picking her latest victim, Jennifer (Dianne Wiest). Oh, Jennifer gets shuffled off to the nursing home easily enough. But it turns out she has lots of secrets, including a bag full of diamonds squirreled away in a safe deposit box, and a secret connection to a shady mobster (Peter Dinklage). This predator/prey thing works fine, I guess, until and unless you run afoul of another predator.

IMDB classifies its genres as "comedy, crime, drama". But (be warned) the comedy is as black as Lutheran church-basement coffee. And Netflix adds on the "LGBTQ+" genre, based (I guess) on the lesbian relationship between Marla and her partner in crime. (Is it a bold move to make the villains homosexual?)


Last Modified 2024-01-28 3:02 PM EST