On Tubi, I watched Emily the Criminal, a 2022 crime thriller written and directed by John Patton Ford. The film stars Aubrey Plaza, as Emily, a young woman who has $70,000 of student debt and is working menial jobs in the gig economy to get by in Los Angeles. She is having trouble getting a steady job because of her past felony conviction for assault, as well as a DUI arrest, and is stuck in dire financial straits.
A coworker connects her to a "dummy shopper" service that turns out to be part of a credit card fraud ring, where she can earn $200 in an hour if she buys a flat screen TV with stolen credit card numbers and a fake I.D. She does it and wants to do more, so one of the organizers, Youcef (Theo Rossi), sends her out to buy a car, with the same credit card scam. However, when she is about to drive away with the car, the dealer discovers the scam, and tries to drag her out of the car, assaulting her, but she maces him with pepper spray, and drives off, demanding the $2000 owed to her by Youcef for pulling off this dangerous scam.
Emily gets more into the criminal underworld, even as she is hoping that her friend Liz (Megalyn Echikunwoke) hooks her up with a job at the advertising agency she works for. Emily's criminal background, quick temper to fight, and tenacity makes her quickly adept at moving products through scams, though it puts her at more risk for violence and retaliation from others. All she wants is to pay off her student debt, do her painting, and have a steady, decent job, and she sees the crime as a temporary means to an end.
I had seen this movie before, and really liked it. Aubrey Plaza is great at playing these dark characters who are morally gray, who are relatable even if their actions are questionable, and depicting how far someone who is in deep debt would go to pay off their loans, while also dealing with blocks in their career from past criminal records. She feels realistic as someone who would work in the gig economy to get by, while being angry at the system that is setting her up to fail.
Theo Rossi as Youcef is really great in this film as well. He plays Youcef initially as a streetwise scammer, but is revealed more to be a funny and likable person who also has turned to a life of crime to survive. His dreams are to own an apartment and be financially stable, having immigrated from Lebanon with his family. A romance sparks between him and Emily, which makes his cousin Khalil (Jonathan Avigdori) more suspicious of Emily getting too involved with the fraud ring and jeopardizing their anonymity as scammers.
This was an interesting little crime thriller to watch, and I'm happy I revisited it.
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