Sundance Film Festival 2022 Premiere – Watching Aubrey Plaza’s career over these last few years has been a real delight, as she takes on more and more challenging roles, like Black Bear (2020) and most recently, Emily the Criminal. In this indie thriller, Plaza plays a character with massive student loan debt who feels wronged by the system. When she gets involved in LA’s seedy crime world, she finds a way to fight back. This is a tense and smart film, made even better by Plaza’s performance.

An art school dropout, Emily feels trapped in an endless cycle of low-wage work within the gig economy. At her latest job working for a catering company, she has little to no agency. Her boss even jokes that the employees have no union, so she best work and not make a fuss. Otherwise, there’s the door. Emily can’t find a better job because she has a felony on her record. This is underscored in the uncomfortable opening scene when she’s in a job interview. The employer brings up her record, and Emily walks out, fed up with constant rejection. Further, she can’t return to school because she’s already drowning in $70,000 of debt.

Emily’s bestie from her New Jersey high school days, Liz (Megalyn Echikunwoke), meanwhile, works at a swanky ad agency. She throws lavish parties and gets to travel to Portugal. This is the life Emily dreams of but can’t obtain. Even worse, Emily thinks she has a shot at a full-time job at Liz’s agency, but it turns out, they only want to hire her as an intern. Again, it shows the absurdity of capitalism’s worst excesses- unpaid work with no guarantee of full-time employment. Emily’s life turns around when one of her co-workers tells her to text a mysterious number. She’s given one job after another for fat wads of cash, everything from purchasing TVs to cars, all through credit card fraud. Swept up in this business, if you can call it that, Emily meets Youcef (Theo Rossi), who runs the operation with his intimidating and dangerous brother, Khalil (Jonathan Avigdori).

Watching Emily evolve and find her power the more she crimes is entertaining. It becomes an addiction, to the point she can no longer stand working gig jobs for poor pay. However, there are more than a few moments when these little side adventures go wrong and put Emily in serious danger. There’s more than one nerve-splicing scene here. It feels like at any moment she can get caught, or worse, killed. But this is also a film about an enraged character who finds a way to fight back and fight back she does. She’s done taking crap, be it from her 9-5 boss or those in the crime ring who try to stiff her or underestimate her.

This is a fairly strong first feature by writer/director John Patton Ford, who had a short in Sundance in 2010. His film contains plenty of tension. Plaza, meanwhile, who also produced the film, really gives her all to this role. Rossi does a good job, too. He and Plaza have some real on-screen chemistry, especially when things heat up between their characters. Overall, Emily the Criminal has some intense moments and a knock-out performance by Plaza. This story about a woman buried in student loan debt, tired of dead-end jobs, will relate to a lot of people. This is an edgy thriller that shows Plaza’s continued growth as an actress. It’s also a timely film in the era of the “Great Resignation” and a rejuvenated labor movement. Emily’s righteous rage will resonate.

7 Out of 10