EMILY THE CRIMINAL (A-minus) - Aubrey Plaza is fantastic as a frustrated millennial who gets frozen out of a standard career path and gets sucked into a credit-card scam for the easy money. It stands as a millennial crie de coeur against the twin capitalist evils of student-loan debt and the scarlet letter of having a record, both of which complicate the simple task of landing a decent job.
Newcomer John Patton Ford, writing and directing, winds a tight watch here, and it ticks away efficiently for 93 captivating minutes. Plaza's Emily is a believable character, paying the price for a domestic assault conviction and DWI, as she channels that deep-seated hostility into navigating the dangerous underworld here.
Plaza is assisted by Theo Rossi as Youcef, the ringleader (and obvious potential love interest) of the racket that promises hundreds and sometimes thousands to those willing to serve as dummy shoppers wielding stolen credit cards. Plaza and Rossi sizzle together on the screen while the tension builds throughout.
Youcef, while drawn to Emily as well as the idea of branching out on his own, is hemmed in by his business partner and cousin, Khalil (Jonathan Avidgori), who is wary of Emily's growing role in the operation. Emily, armed only with a taser, uses her wiles to survive, as she branches out on her own, despite the danger that it Khalil.
Ford intercuts Emily's criminal activity with the mundane tasks of her dead-end catering job. Her successful friend Liz (Megalyn Echikunwoke) teases her with a potential job prospect, but Emily doesn't have the patience to continue to be strung along by judgmental employers. Ford presents Emily as not so much desperate as practical and efficient. He doesn't preach about her predicament; he merely delineates one feasible path forward.
Plaza, who came up through comedy, uses her big eyes and icy stares to inject menace into this jangly drama. She is surrounded by an impressive cast, which also includes Gina Gershon as Liz's smarmy boss; Bernardo Badillo as Emily's catering co-worker; and Rif Hutton as their manager. It all adds up to invigorating summer entertainment.
LEON THE PROFESSIONAL (1994) (C+) - Imagine discovering the secret weapon that is a 12-year-old Natalie Portman and casting her as a ragamuffin apprentice to a hitman. It might have worked better nearly 30 years ago, during the heyday of pulp fiction, but these days, Luc Besson's beyond-stylish slow-burn thriller is too often a pointless bloodbath.
Portman, who can command a scene as well as anyone, is stuck with mopey, expressionless Jean Reno (a Frenchman of Andalusian Spanish origins playing an Italian) and a wildly tone-deaf Gary Oldman (as a sleazy DEA agent), who probably wishes the masters of this thing were destroyed and his unintentionally hilarious ham performance were lost to history. Oldman is ridiculous as a pill-popping fed with an evil posse backing up his own drug operation.
The family of Mathilda (Portman) gets wiped out by Oldman's crew, and so Reno's hitman takes in his tween neighbor and (naturally) starts teaching her the hitman trade. We're supposed to just go with that. Reno's zenlike simpleton will eventually serve up his version of revenge, first making sure that Mathilda is set to inherit the earnings being kept by his boss, played with understated zeal by Danny Aiello, the only adult here who shows any restraint.
But this is Portman's movie, her debut, and she rocks a bad-ass attitude to go with her Ramona-the-Pest bob haircut. She is feisty and offers a range of emotions. She is the main reason to revisit this anachronistic crime chronicle. The same cannot be said for Besson's effort here, full of needless close-ups and visual tricks that probably seemed dated even back then.
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