The Out­fit

Sev­en years after win­ning a Best Adapt­ed Screen­play Oscar for The Imi­ta­tion Game, writer Gra­ham Moore fol­lows up that biopic with an orig­i­nal, large­ly effec­tive thriller. Co-writ­ten with Johnathan McClain, The Out­fit is also Moore’s fea­ture-direct­ing debut.

Leonard Burl­ing (Mark Rylance) is an Eng­lish­man oper­at­ing a small bespoke tai­lor shop in Chica­go cir­ca 1956. Trained on Sav­ile Row, his busi­ness is locat­ed in a rough part of the city, rife with crim­i­nal feuds. But the pri­ma­ry clien­tele for Leonard’s busi­ness includes an Irish-Amer­i­can gang­ster fam­i­ly who are among the only peo­ple who can afford his clothes. His very first client when he start­ed in Chica­go was crime boss Roy (Simon Rus­sell Beale), who admired his craftsmanship.

Assist­ed by sec­re­tary Mabel (Zoey Deutch), Leonard avoids learn­ing the gris­ly inti­ma­cies of his most loy­al cus­tomers’ line of work, but does allow them use of a locked let­ter­box in the back room for covert­ly pass­ing on com­mu­ni­ca­tions. One day, Roy’s actu­al son, Richie (Dylan O’Brien), and a sur­ro­gate one, Fran­cis (John­ny Fly­nn), col­lect an enve­lope with instruc­tions asso­ci­at­ed with some­thing called ​‘The Outfit’.

The fol­low­ing night, before clock­ing off, Leonard is ambushed by the two men, with Richie wound­ed from a bul­let. With police cars on patrol after the gun­fire, they need a hide­out while they deter­mine how to smoke out a ​‘rat’ in the gang, brought to their atten­tion by the con­tents of that mys­te­ri­ous envelope.

Two years on from the start of Covid’s dis­rup­tive effect on film pro­duc­tion, it’s been inter­est­ing to observe just how post-pan­dem­ic safe­ty mea­sures have impact­ed on Hol­ly­wood films. You’d be hard-pressed to tell that the sprawl­ing Licorice Piz­za was entire­ly shot under Covid restric­tions, while the stag­ing of even basic con­ver­sa­tion scenes makes it com­plete­ly obvi­ous in green screen-heavy block­buster Spi­der-Man: No Way Home.

A Focus Features/​Universal release, The Out­fit occu­pies a sweet spot in-between. A cham­ber piece with a small, charis­mat­ic cast, in a loca­tion made vivid thanks to strong pro­duc­tion design, would seem an ide­al mod­el for low­er-bud­get counter-pro­gram­ming efforts, should audi­ences show up. And with Dick Pope on cin­e­matog­ra­phy duty, the visu­al real­i­sa­tion tends to avoid staginess.

That said, one of the few points of artis­tic com­pro­mise is dri­ven home by a line late in the film, com­ing from Vio­let (Nik­ki Amu­ka-Bird), head of a rival French organ­i­sa­tion. ​“Mon dieu, this city,” she says of recent events. As much as the dia­logue through­out attempts to paint a pic­ture of the Chica­go neigh­bour­hood, the only exte­ri­or shots in the entire film are those of the out­side of Leonard’s shop on a Lon­don sound­stage. And while the involved weapon is admit­ted­ly heav­i­ly fore­shad­owed, one par­tic­u­lar vio­lent moment in the cli­max nonethe­less comes across like a stu­dio-man­dat­ed request for some­thing pulpi­er to close the film on.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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