Rosamund Pike’s Dark, Funny Thriller Takes You for a Ride

I Care A Lot is the movie of the moment and power suits and first-rate performances help make its mixed messages work.

I Care A Lot, J Blakeson’s latest fast-paced thriller, has just about everything going for it and while, a little uneven, it’s easy to see why everyone is talking about this ultimately — eventually? — satisfying film.

The cinematography is slick and dripping with colour, an impeccably cast A-list ensemble illuminates the script even in its dullest moments and the premise is timely and fresh.

Honestly, the film is worth the watch just for Rosamund Pike’s hypnotizing lineup of power suits.

The Gone Girl star shines as girl-boss grifter Marla in one of the best performances of her career. With its stomach-churning thrills and sexy, sophisticated cast of characters, I Care A Lot could have been phenomenal, but unfortunately, it just can’t seem to decide what kind of movie it wants to be.

The film is most compelling as a psychological horror exploring the banal atrocities of the American legal system. The first 30 minutes, which outline Marla’s grift manipulating the courts to perform mostly-legal elder abuse, are by far the most arresting. In her poisonous lipstick and killer heels, Pike presents her story as a funhouse-mirror inversion of the American Dream.

“Playing fair is a joke invented by rich people to keep the rest of us poor,” she explains in the film’s opening scenes, as she successfully dupes a judge into turning another innocent old woman into her exploitative care. The film’s first act is genuinely horrifying in its realism, and it sets itself up to be a biting criticism of capitalism, opportunity, and American ambition.

However, when Marla accidentally entraps the mother of a mysterious crime boss in her scheme, the film switches from quiet horror into a fast-paced, popcorn-flick thriller. It isn’t unenjoyable  — Rosamund Pike and Peter Dinklage can do no wrong — but the vaudeville, Tom-and-Jerry antics of the second act will give viewers whiplash.

It’s a struggle to try and put together the film’s mad cutup of themes, allegories, and plotlines. Twisted, power-hungry feminism is a defining motif, but the film’s convictions get so muddy it becomes unclear whether the film is satirizing white feminism or endorsing it.

I Care A Lot  is obviously itching to make some kind of point, but the script can’t seem to stick to a theme long enough to make a meaningful statement on it. It could have been cut into three different movies and would have worked just as well, if not better: Give me a lesbian scammer love story! Give me a dark, cerebral satire on the banality of American evil! Give me a cartoonish crime thriller where Rosamund Pike kicks her way out of an underwater minivan! I just don’t know what to do with all three at once!

Despite its flaws, I Care A Lot shines, mostly thanks to its perfect cast, delicious delivery, addictive pacing, and flawless ending (which, without spoilers, retroactively vindicates the entire film). It’s fun, sexy, thought-provoking at times, and it more than deserves its spot as the movie everyone’s talking about right now. And like I said — you really don’t want to miss Rosamund Pike looking this good.

I Care A Lot, 1 h, 58 min, now streaming on Amazon Prime.