B+Directed by John Patton Ford Starring Aubrey Plaza Review by Jon Kissel |  |
In John Patton Ford’s gritty crime drama Emily the Criminal, the titular character, played by Aubrey Plaza, is given the opportunity to describe her flailing economic status. One can imagine Ford turning over in his head exactly how much student debt she should have. The number arrived at is nothing to shirk at, but not so much that Emily should feel crushed by it. It’s manageable, or it would be if she could find something that paid better and if an employer could also overlook a youthful felony conviction. Emily the Criminal isn’t a class-based screed or a manipulative piece of poverty porn, but a complicated character study about the limited aspirations available to a person trapped by her earlier decisions. If the world wants to treat Emily like an untrustworthy person capable of little more than fraud and graft, then she’ll lean into it.
Plaza’s Emily is introduced in a job interview that’s going wrong. Her prospective boss asks her about a background check, and she could probably get around what it would turn up if she explained herself with humility and contrition, but she doesn’t have either of those things to spare in this moment. Maybe she’s done this before and didn’t get the job anyways. However her previous interviews have gone, this one finds Emily at the end of her patience and she stomps out, back to working in a ghost kitchen where her hours are cut at a moment’s notice. A coworker sees Emily struggling and offers to put her in contact with a shady operation involving dummy shoppers and credit card fraud, all for a quick $200. She can’t resist, and though she has a lot of questions for ringleader Youcef (Theo Rossi), things go smoothly and she comes back for more. Emily hits it off with Youcef and their relationship turns from romantic to ambitious, with her prodding him to take greater steps towards his own financial independence while she sets up her own business alongside his. Her Lady Macbeth act soon sours as she greedily breaks rules, driving her and Youcef towards a crisis point.
Emily’s spiraling exists alongside the put-upon impatience that Plaza has exhibited in all of her major roles, and it comes out here in how Emily is totally unable to be accommodating. Every interaction pre- and post-credit card fraud can be placed on a ‘will she blow up’ scale. This is sometimes invigorating, especially in a late-film cameo that puts Emily firmly on the ‘yes, she will’ end, but it’s just as often that her irritation and lashing out gets her further away from a place of comfort and closer to a bad end. Ford gives the viewer Emily’s frustrations and her satisfactions. It would be delicious to tell off an employer with nothing to offer you, just like it would be hard to keep a whining puppy in its crate when a friend asks you to dogsit. For all the catharsis, calling the employer a vulture and snuggling the puppy result in no job and puddles of dog piss.
Ford becomes a director to watch by steering Plaza through a well-deserved star vehicle and cultivating her smoldering chemistry with Rossi. He also creates a high-tension LA story where palms get sweaty regardless of whether the prize is $200 or $200,000. Emily the Criminal exists firmly in the real world, where violence is visceral and scary and has ramifications. This lacks the profile and the mythic nature of Heat or Drive, but it can stand comfortably next to them as another entry into the sweaty and shady goings-on of working class Angelenos. B+
Emily’s spiraling exists alongside the put-upon impatience that Plaza has exhibited in all of her major roles, and it comes out here in how Emily is totally unable to be accommodating. Every interaction pre- and post-credit card fraud can be placed on a ‘will she blow up’ scale. This is sometimes invigorating, especially in a late-film cameo that puts Emily firmly on the ‘yes, she will’ end, but it’s just as often that her irritation and lashing out gets her further away from a place of comfort and closer to a bad end. Ford gives the viewer Emily’s frustrations and her satisfactions. It would be delicious to tell off an employer with nothing to offer you, just like it would be hard to keep a whining puppy in its crate when a friend asks you to dogsit. For all the catharsis, calling the employer a vulture and snuggling the puppy result in no job and puddles of dog piss.
Ford becomes a director to watch by steering Plaza through a well-deserved star vehicle and cultivating her smoldering chemistry with Rossi. He also creates a high-tension LA story where palms get sweaty regardless of whether the prize is $200 or $200,000. Emily the Criminal exists firmly in the real world, where violence is visceral and scary and has ramifications. This lacks the profile and the mythic nature of Heat or Drive, but it can stand comfortably next to them as another entry into the sweaty and shady goings-on of working class Angelenos. B+
RSS Feed