‘Emily The Criminal’ review: Dir. John Patton Ford [Sundance 2022]

I’ll cut to the chase with this one; Emily The Criminal is this year’s big-ticket at Sundance if you like your thrillers tense. Touches of Uncut Gems, sprinkled with a flavour of Drive with a slight dark comedic edge, this one grabbed me from the opening scenes and perched on the edge of my seat throughout.

Aubrey Plaza is Emily, ‘the criminal’ of the title, who is drowning in college debt, somewhere in the region of $70,000. She’s making payments, but her dead-end job delivering food to high-rise offices during busy lunchtimes, isn’t quite cutting it and she’s only managing to make minimal payments purely to cover the interest. She applies for better jobs, but a DUI conviction and criminal record stop her from pursuing a career in the field she wants to be in. However, her luck seems to change one day when co-worker Javier (Bernardo Badillo) asks for her to cover his shift. In doing so he also gives her a mobile number which will connect her to some people who will help her earn extra cash – $200 in just an hour. Intrigued, and with her growing debt at the back of her mind, Emily makes the call, ending up connecting with Youcef (Theo Rossi), one of the masterminds behind a fraud operation where they employ mystery shoppers to buy large appliances with stolen card numbers. They then sell them for a higher price and repeat, multiple times over every day.

After moving on to higher-priced merchandise, Emily sees an opportunity to start her own outfit – printing fake cards, buying desirable products, and fencing them on the street for a profit. Writer, director John Patton Ford’s always-moving narrative then kicks up a gear as both Emily and Yousef chase their own versions of the American dream, falling deeper and deeper into a murky world of making seemingly easy cash without consequence – or will there be?

You may tell from my enthusiasm that I had a great time with this film – it was absolutely right up my street. Plaza is the star of the show, a bad-ass, though very believable performance, the film showing just how versatile the actor is – she also produces this – but there is also Theo Rossi, fresh from a super turn in the Netflix original series True Story opposite Kevin Hart and Wesley Snipes. He’s really great here as the shady, but slightly vulnerable criminal mastermind and it’s great to see him in a leading role.

But what a calling card this is for John Patton Ford, a feature debut where he returns to Sundance more than a decade after he first came here with his first short, Patrol. This is easily one of the most-tense films I’ve seen for a good while, the narrative not relying on massive shoot-outs or fast car-chases to excite its audience, but rather simple, clever writing where even the slightest of uncomfortable situations Emily finds herself in, really pushes the viewer to the edge of their seat.

One of the stand-out genre pieces from this year’s Sundance, a film showing the ability of all involved and a film absolutely guaranteed to be an audience-pleaser wherever it plays.