Emily the Criminal

 Emily (Aubrey Plaza) is a criminal: she's got a charge of aggravated assault logged on her permanent record. She's stuck in a menial gig delivering food, as that one black mark is very visible to all prospective employers, and the incident derailed her university degree. It doesn't help that she lacks the social graces to butter up people - Emily is completely unable to let bullshit slip, and you can imagine how that would go on a modern work interview.

 So she's stuck on a dead-end job, saddled with a student debt she can only pay the interest for. It's understandable, then, when someone at work hooks her up with a dodgy gig that'll pay two hundred dollars for a couple hours, she takes it.
 The gig is buying electronics with stolen credit cards, and the way it's set up is eerily similar to a Herbalife or Amway meeting - a reasonable-sounding guy (Theo Rossi) explaining what to do, politely explaining that it's illegal, what the risks are, and inviting anyone who's got doubts to walk out the door. Put that way, actually, it's more honest than Herbalife or Amway.

Crimes!

 Emily accepts, with trepidation, and things... well, there are some hiccups, but things end up working out OK. So after a couple of jobs she approaches the organizer to learn the ropes of the business, and the film turns into a sadly plausible low-level crime saga as Emily realizes she could have a future on her own terms as, well, an actual criminal. Like Goodfellas or The Godfather, but in the distinctively unsexy world of credit card fraud and the current worker-hostile economy. Maybe more like an Elmore Leonard yarn but with less humour and more social commentary.
 

 Writer/Director John Patton Ford has crafted an impressive debut feature film, an effective thriller with precisely calibrated stakes and an unpredictable storyline that doesn't quite go the ways you expect it to. It feels gritty and real in a way that many other films that aim for the same completely fail to realise. But his secret weapon is Aubrey Plaza, who turns in a bracing performance as Emily; she fully inhabits the character, making it easy to cheer for her even as she makes questionable (and a couple of downright stupid) decisions.