MEDIOCREMOVIE.CLUB
  • Reviews
  • Side Pieces
  • Shane of Thrones
  • Podcast
  • About
  • Archives
  • Game of Thrones Fantasy

Emily the Criminal

11/30/2022

0 Comments

 

B+

Directed by John Patton Ford

Starring Aubrey Plaza

Review by Jon Kissel

Picture

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+

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Side Pieces

    Random projects from the MMC Universe. 

    Categories

    All
    Action
    Adventure
    Author - Bryan
    Author - Drew
    Author - Jon
    Author - Phil
    Author - Sean
    Best Of 2016
    Best Of 2017
    Best Of 2018
    Best Of 2019
    Best Of 2020
    Best Of 2021
    Best Of 2022
    Best Of The Decade
    Classics
    Comedy
    Crime
    Documentary
    Drama
    Ebertfest
    Game Of Thrones
    Historical
    Horror
    Musical
    Romance
    Sci Fi
    Thriller
    TV
    Western

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    RSS Feed