Aubrey Plaza has been circling around my consciousness for years, appearing in stuff I liked, but never fully breaking into my awareness until, suddenly, I'm an Aubrey Plaza fan. The “Parks and Rec” alum was in 2012's underrated gem "Safety Not Guaranteed." She also appeared in the weird, charming TV special "Sarah Cooper: Everything's Fine." I really became a fan after watching Season 2 of “The White Lotus,” where her deadpan humor and unique beauty really shine. Now there's “Emily the Criminal,” an excellent, little movie about crime and economic desperation.
Plaza plays Emily, a gig worker with student-loan debt, living on the ragged edge of the modern, American economy. Delivering lunches for a catering company, she wears a uniform and has a boss to push her around, but as an “independent contractor,” she has no employment rights and no union representation. Better jobs are elusive because of a felony conviction on her record. Emily gets the opportunity to do a different kind of gig job, one that is illegal. She needs the money, and she turns out not to mind the risk or the transgression, and soon she is a full-blown criminal.
This is writer/director John Patton Ford's first feature film, and it's an excellent first outing. The are a couple of weak plot elements, but the film succeeds on the charm of its stars, Plaza and Theo Rossi, both of whom are magnetic. Thematically, the film struggles a little. Ford seems to be wanting to make a social commentary about student loan debt, service work, economic justice, and the self-fulfilling prophesy of a criminal record, but he repeatedly undermines those commentaries via the foibles of his flawed protagonist, who is not exactly an everywoman. Emily is frustrating, because she repeatedly breaks the rules, ignores advice, and sabotages herself. Then again, that's the character. If she were the kind of person who could color within the lines, she wouldn't be Emily, the criminal.
3.5 stars out of 5
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