The Out­fit – first-look review

Giv­en its sar­to­ri­al­ly sug­ges­tive title, it’s apt that The Out­fit is an ele­gant and styl­ish thriller. It’s use­ful for debut fea­ture direc­tor Gra­ham Moore that an out­fit is also a euphemism for organ­ised crime organ­i­sa­tions, espe­cial­ly when his pro­tag­o­nist tai­lor – or ​“cut­ter” as he calls him­self, becomes entan­gled with one.

It’s Decem­ber 1956 in snowy Chica­go where age­ing ex-pat Lon­don­er Leonard (Mark Rylance) dili­gent­ly goes about his trade mea­sur­ing, shap­ing and cut­ting fab­ric. A bal­anced, ami­able fel­low, Leonard is unhur­ried but pre­cise. He speaks slow­ly with the care and clev­er­ness he applies to his tai­lor­ing, a mas­ter of his art trained in the Row (Sav­ile, of course). A man so respect­ed that even when he admon­ish­es his friend­ly recep­tion­ist Mabel (Zoey Deutch) for her abil­i­ty to fold pock­et squares to his exact­ing stan­dard, it’s dis­patched and received with good humour.

In the cor­ner of the back room where Leonard works, well-dressed men call through­out the day to drop envelopes filled with what we imag­ine to be cash. Two such men are Fran­cis (John­ny Fly­nn) and Richie (Dylan O’Brien) the lat­ter being the son of local crime boss Roy Boyle (Simon Rus­sell Beale). The pair dis­parag­ing­ly refer to Leonard as ​“Eng­lish” as if it were his name rather than his nation­al­i­ty and have such sleazy men­ace, it’s clear that when we hear them mut­ter dark­ly about ​“the out­fit” and a rat in their own mob, dan­ger is imminent.

Leonard is work­ing late when Fran­cis and Richie call round in a sweaty, bloody pan­ic. A gang war with rival crew the La Fontaines has left Richie with a bul­let in his side and as they hide out from them and the police, Fran­cis forces Leonard to stitch his wound (using reg­u­lar thread in the work­shop) at gun­point. They also pos­sess an unheard tape that their rat has evi­dent­ly sent to the FBI.

As an audi­ence we sus­pect ear­ly on that Leonard knows more than he lets on and when a smat­ter­ing of twists corkscrew their way into the film, some are less shock­ing than oth­ers. That said, the sto­ry, script­ed by Moore and co-writer Johnathan McClain, is told briskly and with such econ­o­my we don’t mind spot­ting where cer­tain things are head­ing. It’s a joy watch­ing Rylance and Fly­nn in par­tic­u­lar as Leonard and Fran­cis try to out­fox one anoth­er: a grip­ping bat­tle of mea­sured ver­sus men­ac­ing. Deutch also impress­es as can­ny Mabel and Nik­ki Amu­ka-Bird (last seen suf­fer­ing on a beach in M Night Shyamalan’s Old) turns up late on in a small but vital part too.

Giv­en the pauci­ty of flash­backs and the sin­gle, two-room loca­tion it’s arguable The Out­fit could have been a play instead and one can cer­tain­ly imag­ine a tale as com­pact and tense as this work­ing well on stage. But to quib­ble one would be as fas­tid­i­ous as Leonard, espe­cial­ly when cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Dick Pope’s lov­ing­ly com­posed frames com­ple­ment such poised per­for­mances. Moore may have won a Best Adapt­ed Screen­play Oscar for The Imi­ta­tion Game but this is his best movie work to date.

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