Kymm Zuckert samples the wares of The Outfit (2022, dir by Graham Moore, UK)
“If we had only angels as customers, we’d have no customers at all.”
The week after The Batman opened, there wasn’t a lot new coming out: only X, Umma, and The Outfit. I was going with a friend who does not care for horror, so The Outfit, a film I had not heard one solitary word about before going, won out.
Mark Rylance plays an English Saville Row tailor, no wait, a cutter, with a shop in Chicago in 1956. He and his secretary, Mable (Zoey Deutch), run the shop, making suits for gentlemen, but also men with big shoulders and wide-brimmed hats come in, saying nothing, going to a black box in the back room, dropping off envelopes. Not for the tailor (whom everyone dismissively calls “English”), but for the Chicago mob.
Ritchie (Dylan O’Brien) and Francis (Johnny Flynn, in a different role entirely than Mr. Knightly in Emma) come to pick up the envelopes, and find one with a certain symbol on it, from The Outfit. This is sort of a union of various gangs around the US, and if yours makes it in, then you are the creme de la creme of the gangsters.
Apparently, The Outfit is scouting this gang, run by Ritchie’s dad, Roy (Simon Russell Beale, far from his turn as Lady Bracknell on Broadway in The Importance of Being Earnest!) for membership, and they send a copy of a new thing called a “cassette tape” from an equally new thing called a “bug” that apparently the FBI hid somewhere, because there is a rat in the gang spilling secrets to both the feds and a rival gang.
“English,” (his name is Leonard according to IMDb, but certainly nobody calls him that during the movie), minds his own business and is politeness and British reserve personified, we have no idea if he welcomes or resents the mob using his shop as a drop box, they all seem to sneer at him, but in a marginally friendly way.
Then, one night, Ritchie has been ambushed and shot, and Francis brings him to the tailor shop to hide and for “English” to sew him up with his curved tailor’s needle, while he tries to find something to play this tape on, because they have to find that rat. Then, much plot occurs.
This is the kind of movie that starts off slowly and doesn’t really ramp up too much of a pace but does keep the tension high. It definitely seems like a play, in that it takes place 100% inside the shop, beyond one or two shots of the very front of the shop with “English” or Mabel entering or leaving. But it does make sense, in that this shop is the tailor‘s entire world, so if there’s going to be a movie about him, where else is he going to be?
I liked the movie just fine, but there seemed something a trifle odd about it, and I only realized, looking it up afterwards, that this film is cast almost entirely by British actors, also shot in Britain, but it’s supposed to be Chicago. Dylan O’Brien and Zoey Deutch are American, and Mark Rylance is supposed to be British, but everyone else is putting on an accent, not poorly, but it makes for an extra layer for the actors to push their performances through.
Mark Rylance is, to the surprise of zero people, excellent. He is never dull, no matter how reserved and downcast of eye he is, and to my slightly knowledgeable but not expert self, his stitching looks excellent, as he nearly always is sewing quietly away at something.
I will say that the script started getting a bit convoluted towards the end, as my friend said, “Here is a twist! And another twist! And how about a third twist! Perhaps one more? No? Then THREE MORE TWISTS INSTEAD!” and he wasn’t wrong, the twists on top of twists made me wonder if the film was ever going to stop.
Also, there were one or two scenes when people had lengthy monologues that, for no reason whatsoever, kept people from shooting them. I mean, if someone has a gun on you, they don’t really have to listen to your life story.
All in all, if you have seen The Batman and there isn’t anything else new at the multiplex, it’s an engaging enough watch for a Sunday afternoon in March.
Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog