Post by Dracula on Jun 12, 2021 11:15:36 GMT -5
I Care A Lot(4/17/2021)
Ever notice that most people, myself included, tend to find Jordan Belfort from The Wolf of Wall Street eminently more unlikable than Henry Hill from Goodfellas despite the fact that Hill is depicted as being an actual murderer (or at least accomplice to murder) while Belfort is a less overtly violent financial fraudster? I think it’s partly because the audience can much more easily see themselves being victims of people like Belfort than people like Hill and also because people like Hill don’t necessarily exude immorality twenty foru hours a day. Well, there’s a similar dynamic going on in the new film I Care A Lot, which pits a woman who defrauds senior citizens against a Russian mafia figure who has almost certainly murdered several people and I frankly found myself rooting for the killer for most of it. Rosamund Pike plays a legal guardian for the estates of various old people who her paid for psychologist has ruled to be senile, she then gets the courts to assign her to their cases, at which point she tosses the old people into assisted living homes and strips and pockets their savings. Needless to say, the title is ironic, she does not care a lot… at least not about her “clients.” Unfortunately for her, her latest victim turns out to be the mother of a crime lord who decides to go to war with her, somewhat incompetently. So, this is a movie with a deeply unsympathetic protagonist, which is bold and interesting but having people get behind a character they actively hate from the word “go” is a pretty high risk strategy and it takes a lot to make that work and I’m not sure this is quite the movie to pull it off. The aforementioned Jordan Belfort was similarly horrible person but that movie didn’t center on a fight between him and a potentially less sympathetic villain that on some level you’re implicitly supposed to root for her at a certain point, which is something I was decidedly not interested in doing. That said there’s still plenty to like about the movie. Pike is strong in her role and the film is generally well shot and paced. It certainly makes me more interested in writer/director J Blakeson than I was before.
***1/2 out of Five
Ever notice that most people, myself included, tend to find Jordan Belfort from The Wolf of Wall Street eminently more unlikable than Henry Hill from Goodfellas despite the fact that Hill is depicted as being an actual murderer (or at least accomplice to murder) while Belfort is a less overtly violent financial fraudster? I think it’s partly because the audience can much more easily see themselves being victims of people like Belfort than people like Hill and also because people like Hill don’t necessarily exude immorality twenty foru hours a day. Well, there’s a similar dynamic going on in the new film I Care A Lot, which pits a woman who defrauds senior citizens against a Russian mafia figure who has almost certainly murdered several people and I frankly found myself rooting for the killer for most of it. Rosamund Pike plays a legal guardian for the estates of various old people who her paid for psychologist has ruled to be senile, she then gets the courts to assign her to their cases, at which point she tosses the old people into assisted living homes and strips and pockets their savings. Needless to say, the title is ironic, she does not care a lot… at least not about her “clients.” Unfortunately for her, her latest victim turns out to be the mother of a crime lord who decides to go to war with her, somewhat incompetently. So, this is a movie with a deeply unsympathetic protagonist, which is bold and interesting but having people get behind a character they actively hate from the word “go” is a pretty high risk strategy and it takes a lot to make that work and I’m not sure this is quite the movie to pull it off. The aforementioned Jordan Belfort was similarly horrible person but that movie didn’t center on a fight between him and a potentially less sympathetic villain that on some level you’re implicitly supposed to root for her at a certain point, which is something I was decidedly not interested in doing. That said there’s still plenty to like about the movie. Pike is strong in her role and the film is generally well shot and paced. It certainly makes me more interested in writer/director J Blakeson than I was before.
***1/2 out of Five
