If you got Aubrey Plaza fever after seeing her The White Lotusthen you just have to watch her Emily the criminala 2022 crime thriller streaming now on Netflix.
Written and directed by John Patton Ford Emily the criminal premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year (to rave reviews) and was quietly released in limited theaters in August. But now that the movie is streaming on Netflix, it’s getting word-of-mouth and even peaked at #2 on Netflix’s Top 10 Hottest Movie Titles list last weekend. The concept of the film is wonderfully simple: Plaza plays a twenty-something woman in Los Angeles who turns to crime to pay off her student loans.
It’s a fun, simple clock at just 93 minutes. But don’t let the short running time fool you, this film takes you on a journey. Plus, it even comes with a deliciously tongue-in-cheek ending that will both surprise and satisfy you. Read on to learn more about the Emily the criminal Plot synopsis and the Emily the criminal end, explained.
Emily the criminal Plot Summary:
We meet our protagonist Emily (Plaza) in the middle of an interview. In a masterfully efficient opening scene, we learn that she 1) needs money to pay off her hefty student loans, 2) has an assault charge on her record, and 3) has a temper. Emily’s part-time job at a catering company isn’t enough, and when a co-worker tells her about an opportunity to make a quick $200 as a “dummy shopper,” she jumps at it.
Being a dummy shopper, Emily learns, means buying a flat-screen TV with a stolen credit card. This first order goes off without a hitch. Emily buys televisions, delivers them to the criminal organization running the scam, and collects her 200. When one of the scam’s ringleaders, Youcef (Theo Rossi), invites her to do another, bigger job the next day, she leaves . This time she has to buy a car with a stolen credit card. Youcef warns her that she only has eight minutes after the car dealer uses her card before the bank calls the cardholder. She only has eight minutes to escape. She almost doesn’t make it, but after a physical altercation with the dealer, Emily just manages to get away with the car.
Feeling guilty about the job going wrong, Youcef helps Emily tend to her wounds after the altercation. The two become friends and learn things from each other: Emily is an aspiring artist and Youcef dreams of owning his own rental properties. Emily convinces Youcef to let her in on the scam further. He teaches her how to create her own fake credit cards using stolen numbers. He also lays down ground rules: never shop twice in the same store and never meet customers at your home.
Inevitably, Emily breaks both of those rules. After a brief conversation, during which she meets a customer at home and almost loses her best friend’s dog, she is visited by Youcef’s cousin Khalil. Khalil reveals that Emily was caught robbing the same store twice in one week and that the store posted security footage of Emily online. Khalil, furious that Youcef let Emily in on the scam, says it’s only a matter of time before Emily is traced back to Youcef and the scam ring. Khalil expels Youcef from the organization in retaliation.
As it turned out, Khalil had failed to pay his share of the rent for the scammer ring’s headquarters. Also, Youcef says the owner of the rental property he wants to buy needs a down payment from him. So Youcef asks Emily to help him rob Khalil and the organization. He offers to split the money with her, and Emily agrees. But when they arrive at the headquarters, they find that Khalil stole the ring first and emptied the joint bank account of him and Youcef. All of Youcef’s money is gone. Emily convinces Youcef that they should confront Khalil and take the money back.
Emily the criminal end explained:
Emily and Youcef hatch a plan to confront Khalil at his safehouse, where he is surrounded by other members of the scam ring. The plan goes wrong. Khalil attacks Youcef, inflicting serious head injuries on him. Emily manages to pin Khalil down with a box cutter and forces him to tell her where the money is. Emily escapes with the money and helps Youcef into his car. But even though he’s alive, he’s too upset to tell her where the keys are. Emily hears the police approach, takes the money and runs away, leaving Youcef passed out in the car.
We cut to a shot of the police breaking into Emily’s house – but Emily is gone. She’s living her best life in an unspecified South American country. In the final scene, we see Emily giving the exact same cheating ring game she first heard from Youcef, but in Spanish. It is implied that she has started a new life in South America as the leader of a new scam ring and will never return to her old life. She really is Emily the criminal!