Emily the Criminal

Aubrey Plaza continues her transformation from TV funnylady to indie drama queen anchoring this sharp crime story that's both anxiety-inducing and oddly redemptive.

I always enjoyed Aubrey Plaza as a comedic actress, from her work on TV’s “Parks and Rec” to films like “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” to being a bright spot in otherwise lifeless fare like “Dirty Grandpa.” She developed a sharp persona as a smart, self-confident woman with a witchy sense of humor and a desire to dominate situations and people, especially men.

As she’s gotten older and segued toward dramatic roles, my admiration has only grown.

She anchors the excellent new indie drama, “Emily the Criminal,” playing an ordinary 30ish woman stuck in dead-end jobs who turns to credit card fraud because of $70,000 in student loan debt. Things grow more dire as she becomes involved in increasingly risky schemes, as well as getting romantically involved with the man who recruited her into this second, shadowy life.

Adopting a Jersey accent and a resentful glare, Plaza plays Emily Benetto, who works as a food delivery contractor. Every day she brings aluminum trays of scrumptious food to hi-rise offices for professionals to lunch upon, earning barely enough to pay the monthly interest on her college loans while sharing a cramped apartment with a married immigrant couple.

Her friend, Liz (Megalyn Echikunwoke), works in one of these places and teases Emily with the prospect of getting her a job as a graphic artist, which is what she studied before her life took a hard turn. Emily has a felony assault conviction on her record, which closes a lot of doors to her while also providing a weighty chip on her shoulder.

As the opening scene demonstrates where she’s being interviewed for a job, Emily is basically decent and hardworking — but there’s a streak of hard metal going down her spine. She’ll only be pushed so far before she starts pushing back.

We’ll get to see how much.

It’s a complex character that Plaza bites into deep. There are aspects of Emily that are distasteful, but we also find ways to empathize with and root for her. She may not always do the right thing, but never does so out of spite or any motive beyond pure self-aggrandizement.

One day a coworker, Javier (Bernardo Badillo), clues her into an opportunity to make a quick $200 as a “dummy shopper.” This is someone paid to go out and buy high-ticket items from stores using fraudulent credit cards. It’s a common scheme — someone’s card information is stolen using a scanner or online tracking program and copied onto a new card.

It won’t take long to discover the theft, but all Emily and other dummy shoppers need is a few moments to get out the door with the loot. It’s then resold, new cards are duped and more purchases made. It’s crime based on beating a margin of minutes.

The guy running this illicit circle is Youcef, played with passive charisma by Theo Rossi (who reminds of a young Giancarlo Esposito). Emily is surprised he is not scary or overtly manipulative. He explains up front that what they’re doing is illegal and they can walk away anytime, but if they follow his instructions they face little chance of getting caught.

This proves not to be true in a subsequent outing, where Emily’s purloined object rises from a flatscreen TV to a used luxury car. Things go badly, and Emily faces a moment where she can walk away or fight for her prize. She surprises us, and herself.

Things go from there. Youcef, impressed with Emily’s quick thinking and mettle, shows her the ropes of the how the game is played at his level. She starts her own side fraud ring, much to the displeasure of Youcef’s partner, Khalil (Jonathan Avigdori), who is also his cousin. Their professional relationship bleeds into their personal one: he invites her to meet his mother, she takes him to a party at Liz’ office and offers to pretend to be her boyfriend.

Pretending is what they do. Emily poses as more confident and capable than she is, until she’s done this long enough and picked up enough tricks to actually become the person she was pretending.

Her dreams of getting a straight job as an artist and settling her debts— both fiscal and spiritual — seem closer than ever, yet further away. Emily is both fearful and fascinated by this new life she’s created for herself, and finds her attraction to Youcef is more than the game they’ve been playing at.

Of course, threats will rise to threaten this delicate new balance. The movie, written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker John Patton Ford, swerves straight into crime thriller territory in the last act in a way that feels like a deliberate departure from the interior imperatives that have driven the movie thus far.

It’s exciting and dangerous, but also something that doesn’t quite mesh. Although perhaps the film is simply following the arc of the same transformative journey Emily is.

“People will just keep taking from you and taking from you until you make the rules yourself,” she declares.

I kept waiting for the movie to address an unspoken issue: as a white woman, Emily is a prized asset in a sub-society where nearly all of the foot soldiers and bosses are Black or brown people. One scene, where she and another dummy shopper, who is POC, are buying from the same store at the same time, just begins to hint at the racial suspicions at play.

“Emily the Criminal” is a strange, unsettling but riveting cinematic experience. Emily is not someone we should admire, but we can’t help taking a shine to her rise from victim of an indifferent system to someone pulling the levers in her favor. If there’s a redemption to be had in breaking the law, Emily’s the one to scratch and claw her way toward it.