Sundance 2022: Emily The Criminal Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Sundance Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

Mostly known as a comedic actress, Aubrey Plaza has range and could play more serious roles just as well as her comedic roles. The one constant has been her likeability regardless of the role she happens to be playing at the time. Emily The Criminal continues along those lines, putting her in a solid thriller that put her through the ringer while surely having audiences on the edge of their seats. Though it doesn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel in terms of the genre, where it excels was in its execution while a pair of great performances from Plaza and Theo Rossi keep things exciting throughout its relatively short running time. Nevertheless, this story about a desperate woman forced to do desperate things across the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles in order to survive is likely to resonate with a large portion of audiences. Life for ex-convicts is tough as they try to rehabilitate themselves moving forward so what happens is grounded in something relatable.

As mentioned, Emily The Criminal is pretty self-explanatory in terms of its story as it follows a woman named Emily (Plaza), an ex-convict who found herself struggling and in debt as her criminal record held her back. Looking for a potential way out, she came across a questionable credit card scam led by a man named Yousef (Rossi) which may have seemed straightforward at first but eventually snowballed into something much more dangerous. Regardless, Emily became enamored as she was actually good at it, making money and finding a purpose and opportunity in a city that kept closing its doors to her. From there, the teacher and student relationship between Yousef and Emily evolved into something more. There was a connection there as each was arguably dragging the other down with them as they looked to pursue means to overcome their current circumstances. Their journey was not without its fair share of hardships as their joint venture put them in a series of dangerous situations. In the end, the obvious concern was whether or not the two would survive and that was enough cause for tension because of the emotional connection the film successfully facilitates between audiences and the characters.

And that works solely due to the performances from Plaza and Rossi and their chemistry as Emily and Yousef respectively. They were easily the best part of Emily The Criminal. Plaza gave it her all, bringing vulnerability as a woman who had been beaten down by life. As that trajectory showed signs of reversing, it was compelling to watch things begin to turn around despite what she had to do to get there. Rossi was charmingly-devious but showed some depth underneath that exterior.

Overall, Emily The Criminal does its job even though it may lack staying power.

*still courtesy of Sundance

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.