Review: 'I Care a Lot' is shockingly funny comedy that doesn't just sizzle, it stings

By Peter Travers

Nobody cares in "I Care a Lot," a scathing, suspenseful, shockingly funny sendup of our money-trumps-morals culture starring Rosamund Pike, now up for a Golden Globe for her dynamite performance. Even Pike's Oscar-nominated turn as the murderous wife from hell in "Gone Girl" seems like small potatoes compared to the eat-the-weak ruthlessness she invests in the ironically titled "I Care a Lot," a toxic valentine to greed currently setting its trap on Netflix.

Seacia Pavao/Netflix

Peter Dinklage in a scene from "I Care a Lot."

Pike makes a feast of the role of the vivacious, vaping Marla Grayson, a court-appointed protector of the elderly who uses her position to gobble up the life savings of vulnerable seniors and leave them as wards of the state. And that's if they're lucky. Pike makes Marla a mesmerizing monster. She's all sharp angles, from her power suits to razor-snipped hair that's as cutting as her tongue. And yet, Marla's compassionate smile, dripping sympathy in front of those judges and doctors she doesn't need to bribe, fools everyone. Almost.

There's something different about her latest mark, Jennifer Peterson, a nice old lady given hidden steel by the wonderful Dianne Wiest. No sooner have Marla and her lover/accomplice Fran (Eiza González) hustled Jennifer into assisted living, claiming dementia so they can sell her house, seize her assets and drug her into submission, than Jennifer is stealing a forbidden cell phone and calling her mystery contact.

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Rosamund Pike and Dianne Wiest in a scene from "I Care a Lot."

He is Roman Lunyov, a globally connected, Russian mobster played by the great Peter Dinklage whose connection to Jennifer we won't spoil in this review. Roman sends a mouthpiece (Chris Messina, sleazy perfection) to menace Marla, who doesn't blink. "If you can't convince a woman to do what you want," says Marla, "then you call her a bitch and threaten to kill her."

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It's here, in that spark of feminist fire, that "I Care a Lot" zooms past the call-of-thriller duty and uses its incinerating wit to indict a society where it's cool not to care. In his best film yet, writer-director J Blakeson ("The Disappearance of Alice Creed") never makes excuses for Marla's behavior, but he and Pike let us intuit how and why she decided to challenge the world on its own corrupt turns. And that grudging admiration we begin to feel for Marla's survival skills grows as Roman tries to outmaneuver her in evil.

Watching Pike and Dinklage in action is a pleasure locked-down audiences won't want to miss. Both actors have a blast trading barbs and navigating Blakeson's diabolical plot twists. Still, it would be hard to care about "I Care a Lot" if Pike and Dinklage didn't uncover shards of humanity in characters that hold up a dark mirror to our own baser instincts. Fair warning: This hot-button black comedy doesn't just sizzle, it stings.