This article discusses the ending of the Netflix film I Care a Lot, so it will contain major spoilers.
I Care a Lot is that rare type of crime film that goes beyond its first act without resorting to every other generic crime film cliché. Roger Ebert once said this genre always has original openings and the rest of the story goes on autopilot. J Blakeson’s I Care a Lot is not that kind of crime film. At almost every turn, the characters make the unsafe choice that makes every scene as unpredictable as the next. The final act has Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike), who just survived a murder attempt on her life, flip the script on her attacker, mobster Roman Lunyov (Peter Dinklage). Their battle, which has almost evolved into a mutual admiration of crime courtship, was born from Grayson, illegally taking the legal guardianship of an older adult woman (Dianne West) Lunyov cares about because she is his mother.
Netflix’s I Care a Lot ending explained
Marla Grayson still has all of Roman Lunyov’s diamonds and still holds the keys to letting out his beloved Ms. Peterson from her legal guardianship. The difference now is that he thinks she is dead, resolving the legal mumbo-jumbo and ate the cost of the stolen jewels, hoping he may find them later. Maya, though, has other plans. She can either sit around crying over almost dying and finding her lover, Fran (Eiza Gonzales), close to death, or take control of the situation; she chooses the latter.
Using a connection of Fran’s from the police department, Marla tracks down the license plate of Roman’s SUV; it belongs to his driver/bodyguard. They follow him to his boss’s hideaway. A large, multiple-floor office building that has him, Roman, on the top floor looking over his city wearing a fierce leather jacket, a dainty scarf, and a troublesome-looking man bun undercut. Maya enters the garage and distracts the driver with her good looks and, “Hey, look at that..” point of the finger while jamming a stun gun up to his meaty double chin (you’ll find that works on most paid muscle employed by bad guys).
Marla just loves that toy, as she pretends to be Roman’s driver, she sparks a conversation by attacking paid muscle number two and drugs Roman. She kidnaps and leaves Roman passed out, naked as the day he was born, on a dirt road to be found the next day by a jogger.
When Roman wakes up he is in a hospital bed with a breathing tube shoved down his throat. He sees Marla sitting in a chair with her designer high heels propped up at the end of his bed. She breaks the bad news to him– he is labeled a John Doe and now under her legal guardianship. You see folks when an incapacitated John Doe is found they are appointed a legal guardian and what luck! Marla was around to be Roman’s guardian angel. She makes him a proposal: pay her ten-million dollars and he can keep the diamonds, and she will let him walk away from her care. Which, is hard, you know? Because she cares a lot.
He proposes he will still give her the ten-million dollars, but wants to go into business together with a country-wide guardianship corporation to make millions together. He hates her, you see (that’s a thin line, remember), but the only thing he knows is green (or is this Miles Finch?). They join a union of holy “crimatrimony” and finally turn those wastes of space, those money and resource-sucking baby-boomers into something even our current political leaders haven’t figured out: turning those grey foxes and gooses into pure profit.
I Care a Lot ending – What happens next?
Oh, yeah, they make their money. Marla is on every news and business cable channel that will take her in for a 15-minute spot on how she conquered the boys club and became a success by caring for people when no one else would. The problem is she just can’t get away clean. She caused such a reprehensible problem, basically kidnapping older adult men and women, bleeding them dry, and leaving them and their families with nothing. The conventional rules of most crime films are that someone has to pay for their crimes.
Marla was never one to practice self-care and the burn-out rate for caregivers is extremely high. So, on cue, the son of the woman she bilked out of hundreds of thousands of dollars who we saw at the beginning of the film comes up and shoots her in the chest just as she left a local television studio. She is left on the sidewalk, bleeding out, and dies a few seconds later.
Well, at least she died rich and doing what she loved.
