RACE TO THE BOTTOM (I CARE A LOT)

 

Most people watching J Blakeson's neo-noir 'I Care A Lot' will probably have one question in mind.

Could the scam that Rosamund Pike's sociopath perpetrates actually happen?

According to Blakeson, the answer is yes.

While researching the film, he told Collider he was shocked to learn that there are hundreds of cases in the US where predatory, court appointed guardians have taken over the affairs of elderly people they are not related to and have effectively asset stripped them while bundling them into nursing homes.

In Blakeson's film, Rosamund Pike's Maria Grayson is a monstrous figure - courting GPs to identify possible victims and care home providers to alert her when rooms become available.

She has a wall in her office with photos of dozens of people whose affairs she has taken control of and she chats callously about them as if she is collecting baseball cards.

Her victims are treated like commodities, not people.

At the start of the film, she faces off against Macon Blair's frustrated Mr Feldstrom in a courtroom as he tries to persuade Isiah Whitlock Jr's gullible Judge Lomax to give him access to his mother.

He loses.

Afterwards, Marla nonchalantly lets Feldstrom's anger roll over her until he spits on her during their confrontation outside on the street.

Marla lets fly with a withering speech about how weak and emasculated he is, and how she will always crush him.

Stunned and badly wounded by his experience in court, Feldstrom meekly retreats. 

Tipped off by Alicia Witt's Dr Karen Amos that she has a patient who might be a juicy prospect for another guardianship, Grayson and her lover Eiza Gonzalez's Fran set about taking control of the woman's affairs.

Their scam, however, is based on an elaborate lie from the GP that their victim, Diane Wiest's Jennifer Peterson is suffering from dementia.

Securing a court order to take over as guardian, Marla turns up at Jennifer's lovely suburban home, armed with legal papers and insists Jennifer must come with her.

Dazed and confused by Marla's behaviour, Jennifer is badgered out of her house and whisked into a residential home, after she is told her doctor no longer believes it is safe for her to live alone.

Marla, Fran and their team immediately begin asset stripping the house, identifying valuables that they will auction and hold as funds.

In a bedroom drawer, Marla comes across a concealed key to a safety deposit box and, on a visit to the vault where it is housed, is elated to discover among the items inside is a bag of diamonds.

But instead of declaring this, she pockets them for Fran and herself on the basis that they are not accounted for and will therefore not be missed.

That's when things start to go awry.

While Jennifer's house is being spruced up by decorators, a taxi cab pulls up and Nicholas Logan's Alexi knocks on the door, expecting to collect Mrs Peterson for her regular rendezvous with her son, Peter Dinklage's crime lord Roman Lunyov.

Alexi is puzzled when Fran answers telling him Jennifer no longer lives there.

Roman is furious when Alexi turns up without his mother and orders him to find out what happened.

When he does, Roman sends Chris Messina's lawyer Dean Ericson to Marla's office to convince her to surrender the guardianship and warn her of the consequences of not doing so.

However Marla is not the type to walk away from a fight and she refuses to give Jennifer up, despite the older woman's warnings that she's in too deep.

What emerges is a jet black comedy from the English director of the 2009 British neo-noir 'The Disappearance of Alice Creed'.

'I Care A Lot' casts a withering look at capitalism at its most callous, crooked and uncaring.

As it does so, Pike and Dinklage's characters engage in a battle of wits to see who can stoop the lowest but with little regard for the impact of their actions on others.

If you have any shred of morality, you will find their behaviour unpalatable.

Working from his own script, Blakeson clearly has a ball pushing the boundaries of his main characters' cruelty and sociopathic behaviour.

But that's its biggest problem.

Because in his efforts to demonstrate just how immoral Marla, Fran, Roman and other characters are, he loses his grip and alienates some viewers the longer the story goes on.

As the film hurtles towards its conclusion, the antics of Marla and Roman begin to also stretch credulity and the final act doesn't quite convince.

'I Care A Lot' isn't the first film to mine the dark comic potential out of a terrible situation.

A movie like Danny de Vito's dark comedy about a disintegrating marriage 'War of the Roses' managed to tread the jet black comedy line successfully, as Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner's characters' behaviour towards each other became more monstrous and cartoonish.

The problem 'I Care A Lot' has, though, is its characters are monstrous from the off, so you can't invest in them emotionally.

So while there are shards of sympathy for Turner and Douglas' Barbara and Oliver Rose at the end of de Vito's tale because we have seen him at their best, there is nothing to make us empathise with Marla or Roman or most of the characters in 'I Care A Lot'.

That's a shame because there are plenty of things in Blakeson's movie to admire - not least its spirited performances.

Pike picked up a Golden Globe this week for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for her performance as Marla and, like her performance in David Fincher's 'Gone Girl', she relishes playing a monster.

As 'Game of Thrones' fans will no doubt testify, Dinklage also has form and easily blends comedy with the more sinister moments.

Gonzalez is a good foil for Pike as Marla's colleague and lover.

Messina, Witt, Whitlock Jr, Logan and Damian Young as a care home boss are good value, while you can't help wishing Macon Blair had a bigger role.

Wiest, however, arguably steals the show - bringing a malevolent quality to that airy voice we have gotten used to over the years, as we realise Jennifer is far from the sweet, innocent, ageing lady she initially seems.

Despite some striking visuals from cinematographer Doug Emmett, the cast and audience are let down by a screenplay that just spins out of control and a finished film that could have done with shaving 15 or 20 minutes off its running time.

Blakeson's film is an ambitious failure which I'd take any day over a movie that simply goes through the motions.

However 'I Care A Lot' suffers because of its central flaw.

When it comes to its lead characters, audiences simply won't care enough.

('I Care A Lot' received its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on September 12, 2020 and was made available for streaming on Amazon Prime in the UK and Ireland and Netflix in the US on February 19, 2021)

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