Review of The Outfit (2022) by Markhreviews — 25 Mar 2022

“The Outfit” is a film that’s easy to underestimate. It has the tone of a stage play, with all the action playing out in the two rooms of a tailor shop. While there are a couple of scenes of intense violence, the film relies much more consistently on nuances of word and expression to capture and maintain the audience’s attention. And this delicate enterprise is all in the hands of a first-time director.

The story takes place in Chicago in 1956. Leonard (Mark Rylance) is a bespoke tailor (a maker of clothing cut from a pattern drawn from scratch for each customer) whose only apparent customers are members of the Irish mob. His shop becomes a haven from the cops, a temporary medical center and a place where messages are passed among members of the mob. As the bodies begin to topple, the roles and motives of all the key players come into question.

Starting with the title of the film, the story relies consistently on words with ambiguous or multiple meanings. Is “the outfit” the piece of clothing being crafted or the mob itself? Leonard demands to be called a “cutter” rather than a tailor, despite the ominous connotation of the word. It’s a film that respects its audience by requiring acute attention to language and detail.

Director Graham Moore, who won the 2014 Oscar for Adapted Screenplay for “The Imitation Game,” shows a welcome self-confidence in his initial outing as a director. He and co-writer Johnathan McClain seem to revel in pushing the boundaries of film noir (they effectively capture the cynical tone but never use flashbacks). Refreshingly, it appears to have never occurred to them that the audience might not keep up.

Ultimately, this is Mark Rylance’s film. Here, he relies on the gift for understatement and minimalist movement we saw in “The Bridge of Spies.” Rylance deploys a shrug of the shoulder, a raised eyebrow or a slight widening of the eyes to communicate the same level of consequence as worlds exploding in a superhero movie. The best scenes of the film have him matching wits with the mob boss (Simon Russell Beale, a veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre in London). Leonard’s assistant, Mabel (Zoey Deutch – TV’s “The Politician”), reveals a similar facility for indirection, subterfuge and multiple agendas.

For those of us desperate for narratives not drawn from comic books, “The Outfit” provides a breath of fresh air. It offers a stylish storyline, razor-sharp acting and a multi-layered set of characters cut from the highest-quality cloth.