Mark Reviews Movies: THE OUTFIT (2022)

The Outfit, Focus Features

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 17, 2022

A story can keep tossing out twist after twist, but if there's no foundation other than the mere idea of surprise, the whole exercise can easily become repetitive, predictable, and meaningless. The Outfit doesn't possess a particularly deep foundation for its twisty tale of treachery, but the screenplay by Johnathan McClain and director Graham Moore definitely has a sturdy one: a group of solid, understandable characters, whose personalities, desires, and motives drive each and every decision that's made in this story. That makes all the difference.

Nothing about it, in other words, feels contrived or convenient, because we come to understand who made what choice and why that decision was made by the end of this winding plot. It's not so much about what happens, as the world of 1950s gangsters convene around and within a suit shop on a cold and snowy Chicago night, but how a bunch of obviously or secretly strong people scheme, conceal, and rashly improvise their ways through others' schemes, concealments, and impulsive actions.

The story does surprise, because we're constantly learning about each of these characters along the way. While it might seem counterintuitive to the idea of a twisting and turning plot, there's also—in specific moments and, generally, in retrospect—a sense of inevitability to every move. It all had to happen this particular way, because these particular people are the entire reason all of it happens.

Everything seems innocent in this boutique for men's suits on an anonymous street in some outside-of-downtown neighborhood of Chicago. Leonard (Mark Rylance)—a cutter and not, as he states with uncharacteristic ego a few times, an ordinary tailor—opened the shop some years ago, after spending a long time as an apprentice and a craftsman on London's Savile Row.

Our man narrates his process of designing, measuring, cutting, and putting together a suit, and one of the subtly clever things about Moore's film, his feature debut, is the degree of self-awareness in its protagonist's process. "This isn't art," Leonard's voice offers, because "it's a craft." We can almost hear the screenwriters winking through the narration (There are other, similar moments, such as fabric being cut bringing attention to the editing of one scene and the final wrap-up voice-over serving as a kind of Greek chorus commentary on internal logic).

Part of the storytelling craft is the film's opening montage, which introduces us to the quiet and focused Leonard, his receptionist Mable (Zoey Deutch), and the routine of men entering the store, being fitted, and leaving with an order for Leonard to complete. Soon, some men enter, bypass Mable entirely, and walk into Leonard's workspace. There's a drop box in the corner, and into it, those men insert envelopes. When those deliverers move their suit jackets in a certain way, Leonard can see a holstered pistol on the men.

Obviously, the plot involves those gangsters. Before that, though, Leonard and Mable have a short and sarcastic but wholly sweet scene together. She wants to travel the world, and Mable wants her boss to know that, because she can sense that he's hoping she'll pick up his trade and keep the business going after him.

Leonard is more concerned that his receptionist seems to have started a romance with Richie (Dylan O'Brien), the son and heir apparent of the crime lord in charge of that drop box. "You're not my father," Mable says, but it's not an insult or a criticism, because her father was a terrible man. He returns the compliment in a similar way, in which a negative statement—that she's not his "you know"—actually says how Leonard really feels about Mable. It's only later that we come to realize how much weight that "you know" actually has for this man in relation to his past. Overall, the performances are robust, but Rylance's calm, considered, and actively observant work is the anchor here—while the actor also hints at a "you know" or two about the character's background.

Such scenes, of course, serve as a much more productive, insightful, and illuminating use of narrative than any kind of hints or foreshadowing about the plot that's to come. After all, none of that plot would unfold if not for what these characters want and how these assorted relationships have affected who those people have become.

Take Richie, for example, who arrives with his gangster associate Francis (Johnny Flynn) on the fateful night in which most of the story takes place. Richie has been shot by members of a rival gang, and the two have come to Leonard's shop for safety and to await instructions from Richie's father (played by Simon Russell Beale). They have a briefcase, in which the MacGuffin of a secret recording of their business talks is enclosed. Francis has to find a way to listen to the newfangled cassette tape, in order to find out identity of a rat who has been giving away information to the rival gang and snitching on them to the FBI.

Those are the basic mechanics of the plot, but they matter less than the facts that Richie is jealous of his father's attention toward Francis and that Francis' ambitions for his career within the gang are counter to the established hierarchy. As important is that Leonard clearly knows all of this and more about the organization, its internal conflicts, and how he might exploit and manipulate these people to keep from getting into trouble.

Everything takes place inside that shop. The claustrophobic sense of the walls slowly closing on these characters is created, not only by the dread of these interpersonal conflicts rising, but also by Moore's tight staging and smart use of close-ups, as well as cinematographer Dick Pope's atmospherically spare lighting.

The rest of the plot cannot (because it's so elaborate) and should not (because it does repeatedly shock) be revealed here. It is, though, as much a battle of wits—between characters who are smart enough to understand that their goals conflict with other characters—as it is a series of betrayals and deceptions, punctuated by little details of suspense that portend imminent doom—such as a telltale drip-drip of blood from a chest in the shop. The Outfit is an especially intelligent thriller that finds its tension, not in a plot's spinning gears, but in its characters.

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