Emily the Criminal: A tense, taut thriller
Review Overview
Cast
8Tension
8Ivan Radford | On 14, Apr 2024
Director: John Patton Ford
Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi
Certificate: 15
Is there anything Aubrey Plaza can’t do? From Parks and Recreation to The White Lotus and Legion, she continues to rack up increasingly versatile roles with every passing year. Hot on the heels of the dizzying Black Bear comes Emily the Criminal, a taut, tense thriller fuelled by her electric screen presence.
We first meet Emily (Plaza) after she’s already a criminal – she’s attempting to get a job, but is thwarted repeatedly by prior convictions on her record from many years ago. If she doesn’t mention them, she’s branded dishonest. If she does mention them, nobody will listen to her explanations of what were minor offences. So when she gets the offer of a shady opportunity to make $200 in an hour, she warily takes the bait.
The job? To buy a TV with a cloned credit card and then fence the goods back to her bosses. Once she’s done it ones, she gets a taste for the comparatively simple method of making money, and takes on bigger and bigger gigs from paymaster Youcef (Theo Rossi). What ensues is a familiar story of someone getting in an underworld over their head, but it’s given a fresh relevance by writer-director John Patton Ford as he frames it against the backdrop of the modern gig economy, where security and stability have become elusive pipe dreams for so many people even without the challenge of criminal records. That doesn’t justify Emily’s actions, and Ford doesn’t go so far as to ask us to cheer her on, but the script frankly explains her decisions at every step, so that even though we don’t agree with them, we thoroughly understand them.
That’s enough to keep us invested in Emily’s broad wellbeing, and Ford makes a slick, impressive directorial debut by crafting set piece after set piece dripping with mounting dread – not through flashy camera moves just the grounded sense that, at any point, she’s about to face a comeuppance for her actions. Whether she’s waiting for phone calls, starting a car engine or working out how to answer a question, Aubrey Plaza is magnetic to watch, and she balances the occasional note of sarcastic comedy with a grim and determined survival instinct that keeps us gripped. A gently understated turn by Theo Rossi brings surprising depths to his burgeoning bond with Emily, but this is her show – and she steals 90 minutes of your time without blinking.