Emily the Criminal review: a terrific crime drama gives Aubrey Plaza her due

This review originally appeared in conjunction with Emily, the Criminal’s theatrical release. It has been updated and reposted for the film’s release on VOD platforms and Netflix.

Desperation is the new norm in the America of 2022. Wealth inequality is worse than it’s ever been, and wages aren’t keeping up with inflation, so in essence, if you don’t come from money, you’re fucked. An average millennial is carrying $28,317 worth of debt. Many of them have been working uphill in sand for most of their professional lives. Corporations don’t pay taxes, and neither do the very rich. So what’s the big deal if the rest of us bend the rules a little?

The heart of thrillers is this tempting question Emily, the CriminalJohn Patton Ford’s debut feature, titled. Film is set in Los Angeles’ gritty street level. Celebrities are unable to see the movie from their limousine windows. The film has a lot of authenticity because of its detailed depiction on the network of inequality, institutional barriers, and the simple deals that the protagonist finds herself trapped. The rest comes from Aubrey Plaza’s lead performance, which goes from drawn and defeated to fierce and unfuckwithable as her character descends into the criminal underworld.

It’s not that she’s a role model. Emily Plaza is more fortunate than others: she has her own car and stable housing, leaving behind the annoying deadbeat roommates. In other ways, she’s at a disadvantage, and has very little hope of her exhausting, frustrating life ever getting any better. She’s drowning in $70,000 of student debt, and the payments she diligently makes barely cover her monthly interest. To make those payments, she works long shifts schlepping catered lunches for a delivery app, hauling giant insulated bags of salad and pasta to feed white-collar workers who look at her with contempt and disgust — when they look at her at all.

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She’d get a better job, like her wealthy ad-agency friend Liz (Megalyn Echikunwoke), but a past DUI and aggravated-assault charge haunt her and hold her back. That was a long time ago, but it doesn’t seem to matter; in the film’s striking opening scene, the camera lingers on Plaza’s face at a job interview, anger boiling inside her as a smug hiring manager catches her in a lie about the red flag on her background check.

Does Emily’s short temper and decision to go to art school rather than get an accounting degree mean she deserves to toil in financial servitude for the rest of her life? She doesn’t think so. Javier, her coworker (Bernardo Badillo), seems to be feeling sorry for Emily, so he texts Emily with a number that will give Emily $200 an hour. That “job” ends up being a credit-card scam, with Emily functioning as a dummy shopper using stolen card numbers to buy expensive consumer items that Youcef (Theo Rossi), the operation’s unofficial ringleader, can later fence for profit.

Emily becomes competent in credit-card fraud after she overcomes her fears about being caught. After she is paid $2,000 to buy a sports car using a fake credit card, she makes the decision to retire. This is how she’s going to escape the cycle she’s stuck in and finally get ahead in this world. She adds an extra layer to her excitement when Youcef goes to great lengths to make sure she has a sexual relationship with Emily. When she gets big enough that she attracts the attention of less-benevolent racketeers she discovers her talent for violence.

Ford’s color palette for this film — an industrial composite of gunmetal grays and navy blues that recall glass-paneled skyscrapers on a cloudy day — is reminiscent of Michael Mann’s crime classicHeat. And the amoral Emily would fit right in with Mann’s roster of hardened pros. Like James Caan in Thief, she’s good at what she Does. But unlike with Caan’s disillusioned safecracker, her criminal career is just beginning, and the rush of realizing she doesThe realization that she has what it takes makes a role exciting for someone who had previously believed life was only about drudgery or debt. Michael Mann is the only man who has ever written such an engaging role for women.

Plaza was also a producer. Emily, the Criminal and the film is the latest in a line of projects where she’s proven that her abilities as an actor go far beyond rolling her eyes and making sarcastic comments. (She’s also excellent in the 2020 horror-ish drama Black Bear.) This is an excellent crime thriller.Emily, the Criminal is well-written and absorbingly paced, but it’s Plaza’s fearless work that makes it memorable. She has a talent for playing volatile characters in a way that’s both sympathetic and a little scary, and that balance is exactly what’s needed to make Emily a thought-provoking everywoman for a debt-ridden age, rather than a simple cautionary tale.

Emily, the CriminalIt is streaming now on Netflix and available to digitally rent on Amazon, VuduYou can also visit other sites.