Emily the Criminal (2022, John Patton Ford) (Patreon)

48/100

Nothing very original or incisive here, but I probably could have rolled with Emily's climb up the anti-corporate ladder as gripping procedural, were it not for a steady accumulation of crassly manipulative horseshit. At the initial dummy shopper "orientation," everyone gets handed a sheet of paper detailing the merchandise they're to steal, along with a hot credit card...but not, yet, the accompanying fake driver's license, so that Emily can be the one person who gets stopped when she attempts to leave (Youcef had previously watched someone else head out, muttering "Nah, man, fuck that," and not said a word) and apparently the only one dim enough not to have grasped why they'd taken her photograph a few minutes earlier. Of course, in reality the licenses would have been passed out with the credit cards, precisely to head off any such concerns. But Ford clearly thought it "plays better" this way. More ludicrous still is the idea that Emily's friend Liz, who arranges a job interview for Emily at the firm where she works, either doesn't know that it's an unpaid internship or neglects to inform Emily of that rather important fact. If she did/had, though, how could Ford have written a big cathartic take-this-job-and-shove it scene, thereby justifying the next phase of his protagonist's lawlessness? Didn't buy Emily flagrantly ignoring every single rule of the trade that Youcef imparts, allowing her to be clocked by security at a store and robbed at her home. Didn't buy that zapping the thief with a stun gun and threatening his girlfriend would permanently solve the problem of said thief knowing an address where there's a whole lot of cash (and he'd have tied her up in the first place—what if she owned a real gun? Can't blame it on him being stupid, as he was savvy enough to get led to her apartment). It always pains me a bit to write these "Everything Wrong With"-style pans, but when a film strives for gritty realism, fudging for cheap dramatic effect becomes a serious liability. Also, if you paused Emily half an hour in and asked viewers to guess what the final scene might be, 90% of them would likely nail it down to the dialogue—it's the most obvious conclusion possible, the hack's refuge. Saved from an emphatic thumbs-down by Plaza's impressively unsympathetic performance. 

Oh, and who the fuck throws a phone in the garbage at 1:04 after being told they'll receive a text at 1:00? (Naturally, the chime is heard seconds later.) While this is not utterly implausible, it's pretty dumb. Screenwriting! (For the very old among you, please imagine that word spoken the way Lovitz's Master Thespian said "Acting!")

Oh, and why does the dude who sells her the BMW (I think) have her escorted to the vehicle before the bank has confirmed the check's veracity? That's like a cop jotting down your driver's license number and allowing you to just drive off while he runs it. 

Okay, I'll stop now.