Rosamund Pike steals the show in this strange comedy/thriller/drama which sees her sociopathic anti-hero Marla Grayson exploit the elderly through a devious scam. Utilising a network of complicit and corrupt doctors, residential care home managers and lawyers, Grayson makes a killing appointing herself legal guardian of a collection of elderly people purported to be in mental decline whom the court deems in need of state-ordered support. Grayson fixes the system to her advantage, lining her pockets with the savings and property of those who fall into her trap, gaming the sincere motivations of the courts who only want to help and the heart-breaking confusion of the elderly victims themselves.

I Care A Lot opens with the kind of icy, heartless voiceover one would expect from a gangster flick like Goodfellas or any other number of Scorsese films, and Pike’s take-no-shit Grayson feels cut from the same cloth. Indeed, the usual tropes of the crime genre come knocking at the door when Grayson makes the mistake of pulling her scheme on the wrong target, the seemingly vulnerable Jennifer Peterson (Diane West) who is revealed to be the mother of Russian crime boss Roman Lunyov (Peter Dinklage). Having ferried Peterson away into a top tier care home over which she has total control, Grayson comes face to face with Dinklage’s violent gangster in a battle of wits and cunning that sees the two double down on their retaliatory acts of violence and manipulation.

Having set up the central dramatic clash, the film unfolds through a number of twists and turns which are at once hugely entertaining, but at the same time often mismatched and jarring. There is comedy, there are thrills, and there is a really dark philosophical core to this film, although the way in which it sways back and forth without settling for any one mode of engagement leaves the film, to a certain extent, muddled, particularly in the final act’s revelations and attempts at closure. One particular closing montage comes across as a desperate attempt to elevate the film’s micro-narrative to a larger scale, a bid toward a more pointed socio-political commentary, but feels more as if it were a late in the day addition to a story patched together through hasty re-shoots and studio notes. Nonetheless, I Care A Lot deserves your time for Pike’s central performance alone – a cold and cunning character study which draws upon the actor’s strengths, seen previously in her career-defining performance in Gone Girl.