Aubrey Plaza stars in the intense thriller Emily The Criminal, as Emily who turns to a life of crime and desperation caused by the long term effects of her student loan debts. The following review does contain spoilers for the film.
Praise for Plaza
I’ll start off by saying that I am a huge fan of Aubrey Plaza. Whether that is when she’s being absolutely iconic as April Ludgate in Parks & Recreation, her iconic roles in Happiest Season and Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates or even her upcoming role in the second season of The White Lotus – something I am incredibly excited for.
Emily the Criminal takes Plaza away from her more usual comedic roles, and puts her into a more serious form of acting. I know Plaza doesn’t just do comedy, but its the genre I’ve seen her most in. Plaza is an incredible lead. Not more can be said about that. She is absolutely killing it in this, arguably some of her best work to date.
Fraud Frenzy!
I feel like the film’s first act took me a while to get behind, and stuck into the story – however, this soon changes when the plot speeds up and we get to see Emily The Criminal herself as she starts ditching her food delivery work for the more gritty fraud work. What starts of as a $200 job quickly becomes jobs where Emily is ending up with a bloody nose and getting robbed in her own home – pretty grim stuff.
Even though Emily is doing a bad thing by committing credit card fraud, you really do root for her – and I’d argue that it’s probably a good thing to do so. It’s really strong acting from Plaza and a very good script, which both come together to make for a really enjoyable and interesting watch.
The introduction of Youcef (Theo Rossi) is an interesting one. Emily and him get along really well, becoming friendly over the course of the film, and it sorts of evolves the story into a heartbreaking Bonnie & Cylde-esque movie. The pair have immense chemistry on-screen. Which makes it harder to watch the pair committing fraud together because the film makes you constantly have that feeling in your stomach that things could go wrong at any minute, separating the pair and causing absolute chaos (which ends up happening).
It’s Crazy What Desperate People Can Do
I think the highlight of this film is how desperate Emily is, and how far she would inevitably go to make money to shift her debts, and it is definitely upsetting to watch onscreen. In the film’s production notes, director John Patton Ford spoke about how he graduated from school with $90,000 of debt and ended up delivering food and struggling to pay his interest each month.
I have a clear standpoint on filmmakers when they produce stories which are significant to themselves, and really admire the real experiences and history that can sometimes be put into a story. I mean, just look at Mike Flanagan’s experiences with being an alter boy leading to Midnight Mass
A Superb Final Act
The film takes a sudden shift when things start to go south for Emily. A potential job interview leads to it being for an internship, and cash desperate Emily rejects the idea, ultimately bottling the interview. Things progress even more when it’s revealed that Youcef isn’t getting paid by his brother leading to a heist basically, as the pair attempt to rob the fraud ring.
It is an incredibly intense finale, and a great way to end the story. I enjoyed every single minute of it. I’d argue the film’s ending is a bold one, but is the perfect ending too. Throughout this film, we have had someone’s desperation drawn out and shown in many different ways and ultimately, these people are set on something will always fall back on the very thing that keeps them going.
‘Emily The Criminal’ – Final Thoughts
Not my usual preferred genre, but Aubrey Plaza is at the top of her game in Emily The Criminal. An interesting plot, executed by great directing makes for a really intense and enjoyable watch. You will finish the film thinking “Good for her”, as you should.
Emily the Criminal is set to have its premiere at London Film Festival on Sunday October 9. The film will then release digitally in the UK on October 24.
Young artist Emily Benetto (Aubrey Plaza) is $70k in debt and reduced to applying for jobs she’s either too smart for or temperamentally unsuited to. After the latest humiliation, she encounters a former workmate who tells her of a mysterious company that recruits ‘dummy shoppers’ to launder stolen credit cards. Emily goes all in and aces the audition, but she soon finds that the criminal life is a rollercoaster, whose dips can be deadly. Plaza finds the perfect vehicle for her sardonic screen persona in this gripping LA noir. Darkly funny without ever spilling over into comedy, John Patton Ford’s debut, an unusually fatalistic caper, addresses the stresses of the gig economy in a strikingly original way.
