Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
A court-appointed legal guardian defrauds her older clients and traps them under her care. But her latest mark comes with some unexpected baggage.
I Care a Lot is elevated primarily by Rosamund Pike's ferocious, committed performance as Marla Grayson — a sociopathic guardian who out-Amys Amy Dunne in cold calculation. Pike carries the film with razor-sharp menace. The plot is a slick, propulsive dark-comedy-thriller for its first two acts, with a genuinely unsettling premise exploiting real elder-care vulnerabilities. However, the third act struggles to maintain tonal coherence as it pivots toward crime thriller territory, and the ending — while deliberately provocative — feels abrupt and somewhat cheap rather than satisfyingly earned, undercutting the film's thematic ambitions about systemic exploitation. Cinematography is competent and stylish but not exceptional. Novelty is moderate: the premise is fresh and the female-led sociopath angle is distinctive, but the mechanics borrow heavily from genre conventions once the mob antagonist enters the picture.