The Outfit – Film Review

Leonard is an English tailor who used to craft suits on London’s world-famous Savile Row. After a personal tragedy, he’s ended up in Chicago, operating a small tailor shop in a rough part of town where he makes beautiful clothes for the only people around who can afford them: a family of vicious gangsters.

Graham Moore‘s The Outfit is the rare kind of psychological crime drama thriller film that doesn’t get made too much anymore. A lot of it reminded me of an old-school mobster flick from the 70s or 80s, mixed with the incredible atmosphere on display in Ben Affleck‘s Live By Night.

The world that these characters populate feels so lived in and gross. You get the sense that the men who come into our lead protagonist’s shop are not good people whatsoever, no matter how well-dressed and mannered they are. No amount of “please” and “thank you”‘s can mask the criminal heart they have.

It’s this element that shines the brightest in The Outfit. There’s something so special about watching Mark Rylance‘s Leonard Burling try to help out these violent criminals despite him being a relatively normal and easygoing man. He’s the kind of guy you’d pass on the street or sit next to on the subway not thinking twice about. And yet here he is harbouring some dangerous secrets from the rest of the world.

It’s one of the biggest reasons why these violent criminals use his tailor shop as a hideout – they know that nobody will suspect Leonard of anything dangerous because he’s just so wholesome. The scenes in which Rylance simply has conversations with these mobsters were my favorite.

Moore’s script that he wrote alongside Jonathan McClain definitely has some bumps along the way – notably in its unfortunately dull first act – but it’s mostly an entertaining journey into the heart of a mob underworld. It’s also quite impressive that this is Moore’s directorial debut because it seriously feels like a veteran filmmaker was at the helm here.

It would’ve been nice to have seen a little bit more grit with this story, though, to be honest. Despite this being a film centering on a group of vile people, the movie itself never feels super bleak or unforgiving. It kind of feels like a classy old school picture instead of a deep, dark descend into a scummy place of greed and corruption.

Even still, it’s an impressively written movie that features some excellent performances – namely from Rylance, Zoey Deutch, and Dylan O’Brien – with amazing cinematography and top-of-the-line costume design, and it serves as great showcase of Moore’s directing talents. If you’re heavily into mobster movies, you’ll probably get a kick out of this one.

Mark Rylance is terrific in The Outfit – an impressively entertaining and wonderfully directed psychological crime thriller drama, even if it does suffer from its fair share of issues.