Emily the Criminal

 3/4

Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Gina Gershon

Rated R for Language, Some Violence and Brief Drug Use

In many ways, "Emily the Criminal" is a movie for our times.  It zeroes in on the economic stresses of today's world, particularly for Millennials.  Emily isn't a criminal by choice.  She becomes one because she has no other options.

Emily (Plaza) is trapped between a rock and a hard place.  Saddled with seventy grand in student debt and unable to find anything but menial labor due to a criminal history, she is stuck.  She works hard and is not lacking in ambition, but finds that no one is going to open a door for her no matter how hard she tries.  One day, Emily gets a tip from a co-worker on a way to make an easy two hundred bucks.  She attends the meeting, and although she is initially nervous about engaging in criminal behavior, she decides to take the chance because she needs money.  It pays off, and while she planned on this being a one time thing, Emily also knows that $200 bucks is only a temporary salve.  She asks the organizer, Yusef (Rossi) for help doing what he does.  Soon she is doing well for herself, but the better she does, the more difficult it is to get out.  Even when a much sought-after opportunity presents itself.

Watching this movie, I found myself finding similarities with the under appreciated 1996 thriller, "Set it Off."  Both films are about women who find themselves committing crimes not out of greed or malice but out of necessity.  Emily and the four women in F. Gary Gray's film break the law because they simply cannot survive on the opportunities they have.  There is a familiar term in American jingoism of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps."  Emily would love to do so, but how can she?  Working at a catering service can barely allow her to keep an apartment with roommates, much less pay a five figure debt that is accruing immense interest by the day.  Emily works double shifts when her co-worker asks for a favor, she goes on job interviews in the hopes of creating a brighter future for herself.  But people judge her based on her past or believe that they can take advantage of her desperation.

Writer/director John Patton Ford has, I believe, the same point of view as F. Gary Gray.  Neither one endorses criminality to make ends meet, but they also believe that for many people opportunities to provide for themselves are too few.  There are a variety of circumstances that could propel someone towards crime and it would be unfair to dismiss them as mere villainy.  Emily, for example, knows her worth and has integrity.  There is a scene where she is in a job interview and the manager (played by an unrecognizable Gina Gershon) treats her with respect until she admits that the "job" Emily believed she was interviewing for was an unpaid internship.  This scene is dead on, and I imagine many Millennial have gone through the same experience.  Emily immediately knows the score.  The manager expects her to work for free for half a year.  Emily won't stand for this.  She has bills to pay and won't be taken advantage of.

Yusuf, her mentor and later lover, is also not a typical criminal.  My initial impression of him is that of a cold and calculating con man, but the more I got to know him, I reassessed my opinion of him.  We don't know enough of his past to judge why he began a business of credit card fraud, but there's more to him than simply greed.  And as he and Emily begin to realize, the problem with crime is that neither HR nor the cops can help when someone crosses the line.  It's a lesson they take to heart with great reservation and with much desperation.

Even though "Emily the Criminal" is only 97 minutes long, there are times when it drags.  Ford's understated approach is wildly different from Gray's action-filled thrills.  There is something to be said for realism, Emily and Yusef are just not strong enough as characters to handle as much realism as Ford gives them.  This is not a slight against Aubrey Plaza, whose humor-free approach makes it clear that she can have a successful career in gritty dramas if she wants, or Theo Rossi, who is equally impressive.  Sweating off about 5 or 10 minutes would have done the trick.

"Emily the Criminal" is, in a way, a fight against the establishment picture.  It makes its point of view clear through character interaction rather than speechifying (the sociological observations are hard to miss, but they aren't the point of the film).  But it is also savvy enough to recognize that even when you feel you have no options, crime has a price.  It's a cautionary tale for us all.