I Care a Lot (2021)

I Care a Lot is the kind of wickedly entertaining thriller that makes your jaw clench even as you can’t stop watching, powered by Rosamund Pike’s ferociously controlled, darkly charismatic turn as a woman who treats the law like a business plan. J Blakeson directs with slick confidence, balancing sharp satire about greed and predation with a punchy, high-gloss cat-and-mouse energy that keeps the tension humming. When Peter Dinklage enters the picture, the movie snaps into a delicious battle of wills—two predators circling, each convinced they’re the smartest person in the room. It’s not for everyone, especially if exploitation of the elderly hits too close to home, but if you can handle a mean streak in your dark comedy, this one is bracing, stylish, and hard to shake.

I Care a Lot is trying to be a slick, darkly funny takedown of legal corruption, packaged as a fast, nasty cat-and-mouse thriller with Rosamund Pike leaning hard into icy charisma. The problem is it asks you to spend a lot of time with people who are aggressively awful, and if you need someone to root for—or even a moral center—you may just feel annoyed rather than entertained. As it ramps up, the plot gets increasingly contrived and tonally wobbly, like the satire wants one movie and the crime-thriller mechanics want another, which can make the later turns feel more ridiculous than sharp. If you can enjoy watching confident villains collide and don’t mind cynicism, violence, and a “the world is rotten” vibe, there’s fun to be had; if not, this will likely feel like two hours of being dared to care.