Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) is a legal guardian for those people the state deem unable to look after themselves and she uses this trust to fleece them of all their savings and assets. When she finds Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest) she believes she has found her golden goose, but Jennifer turns out to be more than she bargained for. 

Let’s be clear, this film has no likeable characters. Grayson and her girlfriend and business partner Fran (Eiza Gonzalez) look to live off of elderly and frail people’s assets to the detriment of their families. They are assisted by a doctor (Alicia Witt) and a care home manager (Damian Young) who are complicit in their scam and a judge (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) who is unable to see through it. Whilst Peterson is revealed to be no angel and her ties to gangster Roman Lunyov (Peter Dinklage) and lawyer Dean Ericson (Chris Messina) underline that very clearly. The fun of it all though is watching all these bad people try to outwit each other. 

Writer/director J Blakeson does a fantastic job of constantly upping the stakes and surprising you with where he takes the film. He also has written a script that allows for some brilliant performances. Pike is in the form of her life and with this and Gone Girl proves she is fabulous at being amoral. Dinklage portrays one of the scariest gangsters on screen for some time. And Chris Messina even gets to steal a scene or two as a lawyer relishing in the power his client gives him. 

I Care A Lot is a fantastic movie that manages two feats I never thought I would be writing down. Firstly it manages to spin a film about failures in the legal system and crooked guardians into a thriller where you can not quite be sure what will happen next. Secondly, thanks to some superb writing and a great performance from Rosamund Pike it makes you root for the Russian mafia. 

A real must watch.