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Emily the Criminal Movie Review

Emily the Criminal is a 2022 crime thriller film directed by John Patton Ford and starring Aubrey Plaza in the eponymous role. It is a very entertaining, smart genre flick.

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“If you want to tell me what to do,

put me on the fucking payroll!“

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Saddled with student debt and unable to find work, a college graduate becomes involved in a credit card scam, acting as a dummy shopper and buying increasingly risky products with stolen credit cards. I am not a big fan of crime movies, but this one appeals to me for a multitude of reasons. One is its surprisingly rich, thematically complex story that addresses these issues with surprising clarity and honesty.

The movie depicts the issues of gig economy and how many young people are forced to do these gigs as they cannot find proper jobs. The film is also very clearly American in its depiction of student debt and how it can feel hopeless having this burden put upon you. But the highlight is the depiction of these job interviews as being unfair from the start and just plain frustrating. There is this one scene in the film where the protagonist cuts through all of the interviewer’s bullshit and calls her out on their hypocrisy. That was glorious to witness and very relatable to me personally.

Emily the Criminal is worth seeing for Aubrey Plaza’s performance alone. She is one of the most underrated actresses working today and here she delivered another terrific work. She was perfectly cast and yet she was also rather different here than in her other works, but she still was very believable. The delivery of her dialogue was immaculate and she was also believable in the action scenes as the criminal that she eventually becomes.

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But the other characters were underdeveloped and weak. Only Theo Rossi’s Youcef got more to do and he was solid, but others were uninteresting. The movie isn’t particularly cinematic, but it is surprisingly well developed by first-time director John Patton Ford. The film is highly engaging and it has a one and a half hour runtime, which was just perfect for this type of story. The ending left a lot to be desired as it was rather difficult to buy, but most of the plot was well crafted and the dialogue was phenomenal.