Sometimes, I just want to see something small. Case in point: The Outfit, clearly set up as something of a showcase for reliable presence Mark Rylance. A tailor being held in his own shop by mob types? Sounds interesting, and Rylance can do the sort of mild-mannered performance required to stay small and alive if something went wrong. I was all for going.
Then, I get there, and among the many things I noticed, I made a note how much actress Zoey Deutch looks like her mother Lea Thompson. But that’s a small thing, and I wasn’t sure where else to put it in this review.
Leonard Burling (Rylance) is a quiet Englishman who learned the art of being a cutter on Savile Row in London before, for reasons unstated at first, he just moved to Chicago with nothing but his first pair of shears. It’s 1956 or so, and he produces fine suits to fit his customers, his only other employee being his secretary Mable (Deutch). He also has some kind of dropbox in his workroom used by a local criminal gang, led by Burling’s first customer in America, mobster Roy Boyle (Simon Russell Bealle). However, Mable seems to be sweet on Roy’s somewhat incompetent son Ritchie (Dylan O’Brien), but then one night, Roy and his much scarier associate Francis (Johnny Flynn) come in with a briefcase that, apparently, contains something that many people want very badly. Ritchie was shot in the gut, Burling’s place was the closest possible sanctuary, and since he’s good with a needle and thread, maybe the old man can stitch the kid’s wounds up. Burling would like nothing more than to be left completely alone and in the dark, particularly about a group called “the Outfit,” but on this night, that’s not looking too likely.
What follows is a tense game of cat-and-mouse as Burling does what he has to to keep himself alive and in one piece. Sure, Ritchie may not be much of a problem, but Francis is. And at some point, Ritchie’s father is bound to come looking for them. The briefcase has something very valuable, something that could make or break Roy, the Outfit, or the rival criminal gang the LaFontaines. These are ruthless, violent people who don’t really trust each other much to begin with. But then there’s Burling, and he’s probably not the naive, quiet, mild-mannered man everyone assumes he is. As the stakes increase, will he live to see the sun come up?
A movie like this is basically going to be made or broken on the strength of the lead performance, and luckily, Rylance is more than up to the task. His Burling is a very exacting man, as fits his profession. His only real point of pride seems to be correcting people who call him a tailor. He isn’t. He says he’s a cutter. Tailors sew on buttons. Cutters make suits more or less from scratch. There’s just a precision to everything Burling does that just says nothing is done accidentally. He is the man who, when there’s a bleeding gangster on his work table, will stop to neatly hang the man’s coat up before anything else. Likewise, aside from a handful of moments on the street outside the storefront, the movie is set entirely inside Burling’s shop. This could probably easily be adapted to a stage play, but it works so well as a film on its own, and that’s to the credit of first time director Graham Moore, who co-wrote the script.
Now, characters other than Rylance’s Burling may not be as engaging, but I would question whether they were supposed to be or not. This is Rylance’s show, and the way this film moves around him and the world he inhabits really worked for me. If anything, some of the end-of-movie reveals were done in such a way that I felt were either a little too convenient or somewhat unlikely, but in the end, I saw a darn good thriller set in a tailor’s shop. Or maybe a cutter’s. Precision counts.
Grade: A-
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