PETER DINKLAGE
Makes for a Scary Gangster in I Care a Lot
By David Crow
J. Blakeson’s I Care a Lot is a return to form for the Disappearance of Alice Creed filmmaker.
Satirical, acerbic, and pitch black in its comedy, Blakeson turns professional guardians/conservatorships into fertile ground for mob movie melodrama.
This is best demonstrated by the main conflict being essentially a turf war between Rosamund Pike and Peter Dinklage.
Introduced as all sunshine smiles and pastel colors, Pike’s Marla Grayson is a killer.
A shark in a pantsuit, Marla strips the elderly of civil rights while raiding their assets.
But this puts her on the wrong side of traditional, patriarchal organized crime…
It puts her on the wrong side of Dinklage’s Roman Lunyov.
Cast against type, Dinklage still makes for a classic, terrifying Russian gangster.
Beyond the bushy beard, Roman is cool, collected, and likes to chomp on pastries while holding a gun.
He also has no compunction when he’s told three of his drug mules died in transit.
He’s a Russian mobster who evokes the kind of old school cool of movie monsters of yore.
He specifically recalls James Cagney’s Cody Garrett in White Heat, another tough guy who’s really a mama’s boy.
It also makes him weak and vulnerable to Marla’s 21st century ruthlessness.
Both are scary, but make no mistake, this is a story without good guys.