Review: The Outfit, Twisty Crime-Thriller Never Fails to Impress
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Loading... - Emiliano Moreno
- 22 Jun 2022
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Graham Moore has had something of a meteoric rise — if ten years counts as a meteoric rise, that is — as a published author-turned-filmmaker.
Beginning with a well-regarded, commercially successful, historical detective novel, The Sherlockian, more than a decade ago, Moore followed that just a few years later with a Best Adapted Screenplay win for The Imitation Game, the Benedict Cumberbatch-starring biopic about the short, brilliant, tragic life of mid-20th-century British mathematician Alan Turing, at the 2015 Academy Awards.
From there, it’s been a hop, skip, and a long jump to Moore’s feature-film directing debut, The Outfit, a delightfully arch, serpentine crime drama starring another Oscar winner and minimalist master, Mark Rylance (Don't Look Up, Bridge of Spies), as a Saville Row-trained “cutter” (a “tailor” by any other definition except Leonard's) who becomes inadvertently embroiled in a predictably violent, bloody gang war.
Rylance’s character, Leonard "English" Burling (Mark Rylance), a British ex-pat in mid-‘50s Chicago, owns and operates a small, apparently profitable tailor shop. A quiet, reserved man of few words and a perpetually deferential attitude, Leonard prides himself on the labor-intensive, bespoke suits he creates for his clientele, status-conscious, upwardly mobile gangsters.
Leonard deliberately remains on the margins, content to work morning, noon, and night at his shop, with only his assistant and surrogate daughter, Mable (Zoey Deutch), as company. In intermittent voiceover, Leonard introduces the audience to the ins and outs of making a suit, from the various materials needed to create pants and a jacket, the measurements, both physical and psychological, needed to make a well-fitted suit, to the time, labor, and care needed to turn the Platonic ideal (i.e., the perfect, unattainable suit) into reality.
While Mable understandably dreams of leaving a snowbound Chicago for warmer climes and a life of romanticized travel abroad, Leonard has, if not seen too much of the world, seen enough to content himself with a relatively routine, risk-adverse life. Providing his services to the local mob headed by the elderly Roy Boyle (Simon Russell Beale, The Death of Stalin), however, comes at a price. Read More...
