John Patton Ford's film "Emily the Criminal" portrays the various hardships, rejections, and feelings of discontent that push an artist off the edge.
While Emily was about to drive out of their parking lot, the owner discovered that Emily had used a fake credit card, so he tried to stop her and hit her in the face. Emily quickly took the bag filled with cash and decided to leave it with Youcef. Emily panicked as she heard the sirens in the vicinity and therefore decided to take the cash and leave Youcef behind. At this point, she tried to threaten Khalil to tell her about the cash he had stolen from the office and the bank accounts, but for a moment, Khalil denied stealing any cash. Youcef had asked Emily to purchase a luxury car from some buyers with the help of a fake credit card and had warned her that she had to walk out of their office in 8 minutes or they would discover the fraud. It was a point of no return, and Emily needed a push to walk forward. Khalil had already cleared out the cash from the office, and other places before Emily and Youcef could steal it from him. However, until the very end, Emily considers this a side hustle until she gets a real job as an artist, but that day never comes, thereby finally turning Emily into a criminal from which there is no turning back. She was in a relationship with a boy that probably turned toxic, and once, during an argument, Emily hit him, after which he reported her to the police. To survive in LA, Emily works as a part-time delivery person for a catering company and lives in a shared apartment to save some money. Liz used to work in an ad agency and was living the life that Emily yearned for. She is a passionate painter, but without a degree, she fails to get a job as an artist.
Desperate for money, she takes a middleman named Youcef (Theo Rossi) up on his offer of quick cash, even though it means pushing past the line of legality as a ...
With Youcef, in the script that we shot and the script that I read, I knew the ending. I think he was in autopilot, and I think she was in autopilot. I just have a couple more hours of experience, and I’m trying to be the best version of myself, as a person and as an actor. You could say that he might have woken something up in her that probably wasn’t terrific, and you could say that she probably woke something up in him that wasn’t beneficial to the life he was living. I had an apartment and I was ready to go, and then it was like, “Oh, no, it’s not happening.” I was like, “Okay, so then when are we doing it? And then, when I got to Sons, by the fourth season of Sons, it was a pivot. I have to get it and go, “I can’t do this.” I have to call five people and go, “I can’t do this.” Not to hear them say, “Yes, you can,” but because I wanna try to convince myself out of it. I picked one, and I used that voice, of a friend who was still Lebanon, and who had been back and forth to the States, so there was an Americanization to it. ROSSI: The way I always played it, and the way I saw it, was freedom for him. I was like, “This is gonna be hard enough, on the budget and the amount of days, so you’ve got me.” I went straight from that other film, where I had blonde hair, so I had to dye my hair, and 24 hours later, I was on Emily the Criminal. I loved the script, but then I got on with John and was like, “This guy is amazing.” You could just tell, this guy was in the pocket and he knew what he was gonna do. Collider: I loved the movie, I loved you in this role, and I loved this role for you.
Starring Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Megalyn Echikunwoke and Gina Gershon from a script that was also written by Ford, Emily the Criminal is one of those little ...
She plays the part with the idea that her character is a regular human being, with regular human being problems and she is shown a possible way out. She is a woman that knows what she wants and realises quickly she has the balls to get it as soon as the means are presented to her. As I said at the start, this is a little gem of a movie and if you get the chance to catch it, please do. To make me forget the famous face and invest in the character is the sign of a top-class actress and that’s exactly what Plaza brings to this role. Although I like her generally as an actor this is really the first thing I’ve watched her in that had a more serious tone and she plays the part of Emily with a very I don’t give a fuck attitude. Finding that the interest she is paying back alone is eating her payments, she thinks that she’ll never find a way out of the circle of desperation or debt and get to live out her dreams of being an artist and travelling South America.