Emily the Criminal

Directed by John Patton Ford, Emily the Criminal follows Aubrey Plaza’s title character as she agrees to participate in a credit-card scheme that eventually leads her down an exceedingly ominous path. Filmmaker Ford, armed with his own script, kicks Emily the Criminal off with a striking opening scene that seems to promise a subdued, low-key drama, and the movie indeed does, for the bulk of its first half, play like a deliberate character study that benefits substantially from its star’s completely captivating (and impressively immersive) performance – with Plaza stepping into the shoes of her sympathetic figure to a degree that’s never anything less than mesmerizing. It’s only as Emily the Criminal progresses into a midsection littered with unexpectedly gripping sequences, including a decidedly unexpected car chase, that it begins to transform into a wholeheartedly enthralling endeavor, and the movie, beyond a certain point, adopts a thoroughly propulsive feel that’s heightened by the surprisingly dark twists and turns contained within Ford’s screenplay – which, when coupled with a completely satisfying conclusion, ultimately does cement the picture’s place as a top-notch endeavor that forces one to view Plaza in an entirely new light.

***1/2 out of ****