Student loan debt gets dangerous for Aubrey Plaza in the Emily The Criminal trailer

After the film premiered at Sundance earlier this year, Roadside Attractions and Vertical Entertainment has shared the trailer for Emily The Criminal, starring Aubrey Plaza. The Parks And Recreation actor stars in the crime thriller as the titular Emily, a woman forced to turn to the black market to pay off her student loan debt. She’s drawn into an underground network helmed by Youcef (Theo Rossi, Luke Cage) and ends up in over her head as running credit card scams escalates into carjacking.

Emily The Criminal is writer-director John Patton Ford’s debut feature. In a press release, he describes the project as “Millennial Dirty Harry.” The film also co-stars Megalyn Echikunwoke (House Of Lies) and Gina Gershon (Riverdale).

Back at Sundance, The A.V. Club’s Katie Rife wrote, “This is a juicy role, one that allows Plaza to explore the nuances of her signature deadpan style, from stoic anguish to steely determination. Amoral, complex roles like this one are still too rarely given to female leads, and you could easily picture Emily as a character in a Michael Mann movie. She’s certainly willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if she feels the heat around the corner.”

After breaking out with the long-running sitcom Parks And Recreation, Plaza has made an impression with more dramatic roles in recent years, such as the 2020 film Black Bear and three seasons of FX’s X-Men series Legion. Her filmography this year also includes Guy Ritchie’s latest action flick Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre and Spin Me Round, another collaboration with her husband, writer-director Jeff Baena. Plaza is also part of the ensemble cast of season two of The White Lotus and is set to star in Hulu’s miniseries adaptation of the novel Olga Dies Dreaming.

Emily The Criminal premieres exclusively in theaters on August 12.