The Outfit

A gangland drama from writer-director Graham Moore proffers a tailor-made role for Mark Rylance.

Mark Rylance

After winning an Academy Award for his best adapted screenplay of The Imitation Game, writer-director Graham Moore now gets to direct his first feature, co-written with actor Johnathan McClain who here is also an executive producer. Mark Rylance plays Leonard Burling who has his own tailoring shop in Chicago in 1956. Rather than call himself a tailor outright, he claims he is really a cutter, the man who cuts the cloth that makes the suits for his specialist clientele. He is a quiet, reserved man, punctiliously formal in both word and deed. However, there is something in his history that explains why he quit London's Savile Row for the back streets of Chicago.

It is likely that he had some involvement with the criminal fraternity back in the old country, so he does not appear to turn a hair as Chicago's best use him and his shop as a kind of poste restante where hoods can drop off messages and packages of dubiously laundered money. In return, Burling can enjoy the exclusive patronage of the mob, an Irish contingent run by boss Roy Boyle (Simon Russell Beale) when it comes to clothing them in style. Well, isn’t it just good customer relations? It’s not long, however, before trouble rears its plug-ugly head as the rival LaFontaine black family gang sets about Boyle's son and right-hand-man Ritchie who arrives at the shop with a bullet in his belly.

Then all hell breaks loose and a new game of cat-and-mouse is set in action with at its centre a stolen FBI recording that could incriminate the rival gang, a taped copy supplied by, would you believe it, none other than Al Capone's own criminal syndicate called The Outfit? As the plot moves to and fro, it is anybody's guess as to the outcome, which provides a certain frisson for the audience in not knowing which way it is going to turn before the final curtain.

I use the word ‘curtain’ advisedly because the film takes place in a one-location setting reminiscent of a theatre performance [cf. Hitchcock's Rope], plus it also has a definite Pinteresque feel about it. Set in Chicago, but filmed in London, The Outfit never gives the impression of taking place in the Windy City, even though director Moore was born there. Perhaps using a British cast also gives the game away, although the performances are spot-on, particularly that of Mark Rylance in another convincing as possible, potentially award-winning portrayal of Burling the cutter. Simon Russell Beale is also superb as Boyle, the Irish mob boss in a performance that recalls both Edward G. Robinson and Sydney Greenstreet. As Boyle's son Ritchie (Dylan O'Brien) and as Francis, Boyle's heavy (Johnny Flynn), both actors are all too credible, while Zoey Deutch as Burling's assistant makes a good femme fatale in the style of a Mary Astor.

Even set in one claustrophobic set, the cinematography by Dick Pope gives the piece a certain atmospheric charm and the production design by Gemma Jackson is as chic and elegant as can be. My only carp is that I couldn't believe we were ever in Chicago.

MICHAEL DARVELL

Cast: Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Johnny Flynn, Dylan O'Brien, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Simon Russell Beale, Johnathan McClain, Alan Mehdizadeh, Chiedu Agborh.

Dir Graham Moore, Pro Ben Browning, Amy Jackson and Scoop Wasserstein, Screenplay Johnathan McClain and Graham Moore, Ph Dick Pope, Pro Des Gemma Jackson, Ed William Goldenberg, Music Alexandre Desplat, Costumes Sophie O'Neill and Zac Posen.

FilmNation Entertainment/Focus Features/Scoop Productions II/Unified Theory-Universal Pictures.
105 mins. USA. 2022. US Rel: 18 March 2022. UK Rel: 8 April 2022. Cert. 15.