In "Emily the Criminal," when we first meet Emily (Aubrey Plaza), she's at a job interview, somewhat nervously handling the questions put to her by an HR rep. When he gets to her felony conviction, however, she drops her veneer of amiability and storms out, flashing the temper and irascibility that we understand might have something to do with those charges against her.
Saddled with $70,000 in student loan debt -- which you might as well double, as it's $70,000 of student loan debt from art school, for God's sake -- and with no great opportunities before her, she takes a tip from a buddy at the catering company she works for, and gets in contact with Youcef (Theo Rossi), a Lebanese American, who along with his cousin, Khalil (Jonathan Avigdori), runs a "dummy shopper" ring.
Soon, Emily is sauntering into a big-box store, and buying a large flatscreen with a stolen credit card and a fake driver's license. With the chance at scoring big money, and with no better prospects in sight, she quickly goes from contract shopping for Youcef, to having him help set up her own shopping platform, to the consternation of Khalil. When things take a turn, putting the cousins at violent odds with each other, it's Emily who shows the more passive Youcef, now her boyfriend, how things get done.
John Patton Ford's "Emily the Criminal," from his own screenplay, offers up another great turn from Plaza, who has fully embraced her indie-goddess status, starring in (and producing) low-budget pictures with a great deal of panache. Emily, with her artistic talent on hold to appease her massive student debt (the Millennial's Burden, it would seem), is frustrated and down on her luck, but, we come to understand, far more indomitable and feisty than anyone gives her credit for, at first. "The problem was," she eventually confides to Youcef about her aggravated assault conviction against her then boyfriend, "I didn't go far enough."
She certainly doesn't make that mistake twice. Ford's highwire-taut thriller builds in suspense slowly, but unmistakably, as we get more embroiled in Emily's circumstances, and are forced to question our first impressions of her. As the tension mounts, she comes more and more into her own, until at last she has outgrown the restraints, ethical and legal, put on her. It's a rare form of film that finds in the heart of its protagonist, the unrepentant soul of a born gangster.