User Reviews

On voit parfois ce film américain avec le titre français "Emily, criminelle malgré elle"... mais il s'agit d'une extrapolation un tantinet exagérée, car Emily a bel et bien choisi une carrière de criminelle afin (bien sûr) de rembourser en première intention son "prêt étudiant" qui s'élève à... 72 000 dollars ! (d'où le titre original "Emily the criminal"...). Pour autant, bien des raisons sont exposées ici, tout à fait recevables et c'est ici le côté social voire sociétal du film qui se manifeste le plus ; on pourrait bien entendu en discuter (car tout est discutable) mais on ne peut nier que les arguments s'avèrent des plus valables... le monde (du travail) est en effet souvent injuste, surtout aux Etats-Unis mais c'est de toute façon partout pareil... (sauf dans les pays sous-développés où c'est bien pire encore !). Quoi qu'il en soit, Emily travaille surtout... dans la fraude à la carte bancaire ! un "petit boulot" bien payé, malgré les risques que cela peut comporter... et à cet égard malgré un souci de réalisme bienvenu (dans l'ensemble), on peut déplorer une exagération des situations, car, voyez-vous, il s'agit aussi d'un film féministe au sein duquel Emily parvient à déjouer bien des pièges... Emily est campée par une actrice très convaincante (mais pas aussi jolie en vrai que sur l'affiche...) et est affublée d'un piercing dans le pif (putain, ça craint). Elle s'affiche souvent en débardeur, exposant ainsi ses gants de toilette (franchement, c'est pas sérieux... et pas très joli).Mais finalement (en dehors de la fin assumée mais... discutable), c'est certainement la mise en scène qui convainc le plus, intimiste mais pas trop, bien étudiée et fluide, c'est clairement du beau et bon boulot. Tant que j'y suis, on peut aussi déplorer une baisse de rythme, temporaire mais assez regrettable... mais dans l'ensemble, je ne veux point me montrer trop pointilleux : c'est un film tout à fait sympathique.

T’was alright. T’was alright I say. Plaza was good - Theo gave me an erection as always. There’s my review.

Decided to give this a try on Saturday morning. Was impressed by the story and characters. A good watch that doesn’t outstay its welcome. So much better than so many films that do get a cinema release.

Plaza does the heavy lifting and makes it all look easy. She captivates in every scene and sells the solid but thin script with aplomb. What could have easily been surface story to set up action and thrills delivers smarts along with the entertainment. Trapped by minor mishaps that taint her record, student loans with onerous interest, and a "grub hub" dead end gig, Emily is ripe for misadventures that start small and escalate quickly. Plaza not only sells every step in Emily's journey, she makes the entire enterprise sparkle with utter believability. The places inhabited by those for whom the brass ring is well out of reach are indeed crowded. Don't tell those going barefoot about pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. The direction is not flashy, but it serves the story very well. I had forgotten about another Plaza gem: Safety Not Guaranteed. This immensely talented actor should be lead in film after film. She has been stellar in Legion, White Lotus, and Black Bear, to name a few choice roles. Seeing that she co-stars in the upcoming Francis Ford Coppola film, Megalopolis, is the best kind of news. Emily the Criminal is a perfect example of a small, high caliber film that slips under the radar all too often. I am reminded that paying attention to reviews that come out of the best film festivals always pays dividends, and the big awards pass by the most deserving all too often.

Boring, lifeless story, characters are boring. Got half way through and was bored out of my mind

Well produced drama brings together a great cast, soundtrack, pacing and editing to tell a compelling if unoriginal story. Plaza excels playing a broke student saddled with an overwhelming debt and a troubled past as she becomes evermore embroiled in criminal activity. Despite that sales pitch things move at a slow pace with only a handful of 'action' sequences which worked extremely well IMO. I particularly liked thay plaza isnt suddenly Jason statham in these moments. Overall I expected less and the movie delivered so much more. Worth a watch!

The overall feel—cinematic look—was similar to a lower budget production, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Pace and flow of plot: about a 3/10. Acting: 10/10– Plaza and male lead are fantastic. Writing: 4/10 — not bad but makes it quite forgettable bc there’s nothing that makes it unusual in any way.

Emily the Criminal, one of the best of the year. How unfair-life turns you into a criminal. Good story. Soft, realistic, but thriving. Aubrey Plaza is a spectacular actress. The story gave her a lot of space to fill. And she does it well.

It was interesting to see a change of turn for Aubrey Plaza, who was basically only getting roles as an unsympathetic stuck-up girl, which had typecast her, yet she finally proves she can do other things. And while she's a more than competent lead, I have to say the context itself is very weak. I understand the narrative is focused on her, that she is a young artist with very different ambitions than the rest of the people doing the same as her to survive in this story, and yet any attempt to critique the capitalist model that has her in her situation - indebted and unable to get a better paying job - is totally relegated to just being the catalyst for her circumstances and motivations, but nothing more. Even when we do get to explore some of Theo Rossi's character, he and his motivations are sacrificed in order for Emily to have a closure. Emily the Criminal is an entertaining experience, but also a very basic one.

Emily the criminal é um filme apenas correto sobre uma mulher que passa dificuldades financeiras e aceita uma proposta ilegal para ganhar dinheiro: passar cartões roubados em loja e entregar o produto para seus gerenciadores. Estrelado por Aubrey Plaza, o filme tem uma pegada muito correta, nas horas em que Emily se envolve em problemas, o suspense toma conta, e nas horas em que o cotidiano sofrido precisa ser mostrado, o drama invade a tela, de forma natural e orgânica. Claro que, devido à personalidade forte de Emily, o filme vai evoluindo junto com ela, aos poucos ela vai compreendendo o negócio e se envolvendo com os mandantes. A grande questão aqui, para além do empoderamento feminino, é perceber que estratégias de sobrevivência estão postas, mas não apenas, já que o capitalismo seduz por sempre querermos mais. E ao tornar-se uma mulher que atua clandestinamente, ela também recebe o ônus do gênero, como cantadas ou suspeitas de sua eficiência. Aí o filme vai passando na sua tela e você nem se dá conta até seu término. Não há absolutamente nada de inovador, é apenas uma história bem contada, de forma até digna, mas sem um ar se surpresa ou algo a mais que se justifique maior aclamação.

Good acting from Plaza, but the film is full of cliches and crime glamorization. Decent but forgettable.

Good movie on a girl's struggle to find a good paying job. A tale of our times about student debt, partying teens, and crime being the only way to make a living.

bad [ bad ] adjective, worse, worst;(Slang) bad·der, bad·dest for 36. not good in any manner or degree.

I quite liked it. At first thought it will be boring, but in the end was quite interesting watch.

This one surprised me. Didn’t expect much but this was surprisingly great. Great acting and a thrill ride that keeps you guessing and on the edge of your seat. Good time.

Overall it's a pretty boring story. There was a lot of potential. Hopefully next time they can do better.

I am now an Aubrey Plaza fan. Suspenseful and solid movie but not the biggest fan of the ending

Rather than a crime picture, Emily the Criminal is a character study with some excellent performances. Everything is nicely put together.

Tight little story told with grit and acted out believably by the main characters. Feels realistic, the way the main protagonist slides further and further over to the wrong side of the law. You feel for her and her friend as things start to go wrong. The handheld camera style of filming got a bit on my nerves a little, but other than that, I thought it was a great little movie.

Buckle your seatbelt....fast paced thriller with Aubrey Plaza giving an amazing performance. A moral dilemma join corporate America or go rogue?

(Mauro Lanari) What would be the reason for the enthusiasm for this directorial debut, which for most of the time disguises itself as a French film about the illegal survival strategies adopted by a couple of crooks in the banlieue, cinematographically risen to a new "axis mundi", and then suddenly flows into a Sundance and female version of Jordan Belfort?

I was looking forward to this and it did not disappoint. Yes, I love Aubrey Plaza. Who doesn't? But boy does she pull out all the guns in this movie. Obviously, she's incredibly sexy, but she just oozes sex and danger in this flick. She is at the top of her game, and I enjoyed it on every level. The plot isn't super complex, which is refreshing, and as it escalates, it never goes over the top into action/adventure, but stays grounded in reality. A great heist flick, that simmers, but never quite boils, and I mean that in a good way. I believe this movie. I can see this happening across the country.

This is a fantastic thriller with great acting and dialogue. A meaningful and entertaining film that smartly critiques the modern capitalist hellscape that millennials have to deal with.

Great performance anchored by good direction and a twisty script... I don't know if the ending works...? But I was pretty satisfied throughout.

Decent directorial debut, Plaza did really well with a pretty small scale plot and scope. Found the middle 3rd to be pretty uneventful, a lot of unanswerable questions left on the table.

Only went out to see a movie because I needed to waste some time. I thought this premise sounded the most potentially interesting of the options, but it turned out that I didn't find the story/storytelling to be very compelling or interesting. I guess I was hoping for more poignant illustrations of the struggles that young people these days have to deal with (student loan debt, rigged economy and social structure, socialism for the rich/corporations, ever-growing extreme wealth hoarding, grave absurdities and injustices of late-stage capitalism, etc). I only remember one scene striking me as being particularly enjoyable. The rest felt mostly just passable and occasionally more on the weak/questionable side. If I weren't a fan of Aubrey and somebody else was playing her role, I might actually rate this a 6.

Aubrey Plaza has come a long way from her deadpan comedic role as April Ludgate, an apathetic student intern on “Parks and Recreation.” Here, she takes on the title role and delivers a performance more powerful than anything she’s done before. Emily is an art school dropout with $70,000 in student loan debt. She is trying to make her way in an unforgiving Los Angeles by working for a food delivery service and sharing a cramped apartment. A co-worker hooks her up with a different money-making opportunity: making $200 for buying a big screen TV using a stolen credit card number. For Emily, the money is irresistible. The team of fraudsters is led by Yousef, who becomes a teacher, protector and guide into black market capitalism. Eventually, under the tutelage of Yousef (an excellent Theo Rossi – “Sons of Anarchy,” “Luke Cage”), she sets up her own black market business as her life becomes further entangled with his. “Emily the Criminal” is Writer/Director John Patton Ford’s feature debut. It’s a very promising start. While sticking close to the core tenets of film noir, particularly the profound cynicism, Ford also pushes the genre a bit. While classic film noir relies exclusively on dark colors and shadows, Ford’s jarring use of blindingly bright light in some daytime scenes is an interesting departure. His filming technique owes a lot to the Safdie brothers, with its constant use of extreme close-ups and quick cuts to build tension and heighten a sense of immediacy. In Ford’s script, the character of Emily serves as a stand-in for her entire generation, as she copes with crushing student debt and limited financial options available for the undereducated. Ford effectively develops a few additional themes. Without belaboring the point, his film depicts how the current system benefits the few, not the many. In one particularly powerful scene, an ad agency boss (Gina Gershon) browbeats Emily, finding it incomprehensible that Emily is not eternally grateful for the opportunity to work for several months as an unpaid intern. Ford also makes a larger point about immigrants trying to find their own paths to success while navigating the complexities of a society that’s hardly welcoming. At one point, Emily tells us that her biggest mistake when confronting injustice has been that she didn’t go far enough. So she gets bolder as she goes along. By the time another criminal says to her, “You’re a very bad influence,” she’s earned it. Ultimately Emily is a fascinating character study delineating how far rage and self-belief can take you. “Emily the Criminal” is a thought-provoking crime story. When we root for Emily, we’re urging on an anti-hero who, like the central character in the 1976 film “Network,” is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Emily’s clearly not a role model, but by the end we hope she wins anyway.

So I went into this movie completly blind. Didnt see a trailer, just saw that Aubrey Plaza was in a new movie and wanted to go watch **** story follows Emily who is a college drop out,struggling to make money and is just trying to find a stable job. She also loves art but the passion is there like it used to be. When she gets invited to make $200 in a day from an contact she was given she learns its credit card scam. Once she gets a taste of how easy it is she slowly falls down the rabbit hole of wanting to make more and more cash this way. This is deffinitly a character driven movie with Aubrey doing a fantastic job in this movie. She is known for her more dry comedic roles but she plays a serious character who is down on her luck and does fantastic in it. The movie shows how its hard for her to get a job with small crimes on her record. I like how personal and real this movie feels, with mostly medium and close up shots through out this whole movie, making you feel really close to her and feel everything she is feeling and going through. As the risk of the jobs go up during the movie and her making more money it gets really tense in some scenes. I really enjoyed this movie, fantstic acting from Aubrey and even Theo did a good job. This is another movie with a first time Director in John Patton Ford who I think did a good job with his first outting. He also wrote the movie which is impressive. From beginning to end I was investing in her character growth and the story and was really interested to see how it all unfolds. If you like these kinda movies I say deffinitly check it out.

Given the level of graft and corruption in contemporary society, it often seems like the only way to get ahead is to cheat, even if it means breaking the law. The age-old wisdom of working hard, playing by the rules and being fair seems “quaint” to many, especially among many of today’s young adults, who feel as though they’ve been saddled with insurmountable debt from dubious lending practices like those associated with burdening student loans. But what is one to do when the old rules simply don’t work and a new solution is needed to break out of financial bondage? Those are the questions raised in this taut new thriller about a young woman torn between following her principles and being practical in the face of staggering odds working against her. Writer-director John Patton Ford’s debut feature addresses these issues head-on in a straight-up drama about what desperation can prompt us to do when we feel we’re running out of conventional options. The film provides a superb showcase for actress Aubrey Plaza as the beleaguered protagonist, who finds it surprisingly easy to turn to what many older viewers might see as a series of questionable and unethical choices, despite the fact that she often sees no other way out of her circumstances – and the troubling path that they set her on for the future. Some may see some of the narrative’s developments as a little far-fetched, but one simultaneously can’t help but wonder what would we do if we found ourselves in the title character’s shoes? This surprisingly thoughtful offering dressed up in a somewhat conventional crime drama makes for an intriguing fusion of genres that will have you on the edge of your seat for its economical and always-engaging 100 runtime. Don’t sell this one short; it may not be widely known, but it’s well worth a look.

Great screenwriting & direction. Great performance from Aubrey Plaza. She makes unlikeable at least sympathetic. Like a great roller coaster ride, this mmovie is over before you know it. The ending is really the only thing I can say is up for debate, but Emily the Criminal is the best movie of 2022, right up there with Nope.

Plaza is electrically tenacious in the lead role. There are some very gripping scenes, but some of the quieter moments don’t quite land.

I walked out about three-quarters in. It's rare for me to bail on a movie. But I was bored. I was not caring about how things might turn out. For better or worse, our own lives are much more interesting (other than going to a movie in the afternoon on a Friday). However, my own mind had done a Freudian slip. I read the name of the movie as "Emily the Killer". Maybe that had something to do with why I impulsively decided to go see it. Looking back, I now realize why the ticket vendor gave me a strange look when I asked for one ticket to "Emily the Killer". Now I second guess myself wondering if I should have stayed for the ending to see if she ever kills anyone. But, I did not care about the ending, because the characters gave me no reason to care. Up to my departure, the movie was a peek inside the lives of some random ordinary strangers. They have the same kind of mundane lives that make us want to move somewhere nice like Costa Rica or Denmark. On the bright side, I might recommend it to a teenager as a cautionary documentary about the importance of keeping a clean record. And above all else kids, don't go get into student loan debt for an art degree. Especially if you suspect that you have no artistic talent.