A Seattle moviegoing lifestyle magazine
Margaret Qualley stars as Honey O’Donohue, a Bakersfield, CA private investigator on a mission to uncover the suspicious circumstances behind a woman’s death just before their scheduled meeting. The case pulls her into the orbit of a shady church and its sleazy pastor, Reverend Drew (Chris Evans). Qualley is magnetic throughout, commanding attention with her rapid-fire PI cadence. This is absolutely her movie, and she almost saves it from itself. Almost.
At any given point throughout the almost-two hour run time, I don’t think I could satisfactorily explain what exactly is going on. It’s a taut, fast-paced heist movie, but it can be hard to follow at times. I also don’t care. Last time Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham teamed up, in 2021, I wrote, “I’m a simple man and sometimes I just need to watch Jason Statham beat the shit out of some bad guys. Ya know?” Nothing has changed: I got what I wanted then, and I’m getting what I want now.
It’s not difficult to have sympathy for Emily, the character Aubrey Plaza plays in the great new movie Emily the Criminal. She understands that a person in her circumstances (loaded with debt from student loans for an expensive art school education and a permanent record that includes some legal infractions) has no shot at “the American dream.”
