Berlinale 2022: Tautly written, breathtakingly paced, Graham Moore’s The Outfit is a perfectly tailored crime drama

Language: English

Tensions run high and heads roll over the course of one night at L. Burling Bespoke Tailors in the Chicago of 1950s as expert English tailor Leonard and his shrewd secretary Mable are caught in the crossfire between two powerful gangs in The Outfit that premiered at Berlinale 2022. Tautly written and breathtakingly paced, academy award-winning writer Graham Moore’s directorial debut is every bit Sherlockian (also the name of his novel that made him a literary figure) with ample twists and turns in every corner in this watertight enterprise.

Sir Mark Rylance as the bespoke tailor Leonard – cutter, he will correct you, for anyone with a needle and a spool of thread can be a tailor – is a far cry from his recent outing as the unemotional and eccentric billionaire Peter Isherwell in the Netflix comedy _Don’t Look Up_. Leonard is a picture of poise going about his serious business of making perfectly fitted suits for his clientele that seems to mostly involve gangsters with shady business dealings.

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He allows the said gangsters to keep a black box in the back of his workshop for easy exchange of messages because of its unsuspecting location. Afterall, a quiet English tailor will hardly ever be under scrutiny to be the carrier pigeon for the mafiosi. Leonard also has a charming backstory on why he moved to Chicago from London - the discovery of Jeans ruined his business back home.

Leonard and his secretary Mabel, played by an exuberant Zoey Deutch, share an easy camaraderie. She collects snow globes and doesn’t appear interested in taking over the business from him or learning the craft for she wants to leave Chicago at the next available opportunity. “One way or another, I’m getting out of here,” she claims.

She’s also not entirely convinced Leonard is who he appears to be outwardly. Her curiosity only doubles when she asks Leonard: “Do we allow all our customers to keep black boxes in the back?” and Leonard, without any moral conundrum, replies, “If we only allow angels to be customers, soon we will have no customers at all.” Leonard is not unsuspecting after all, and his loyalties may not lie with anyone.

Into this world of fragile peace enter the brash gangster Richie Boyle – Dylan O’Brien – whose father the senior Boyle, Leonard is indebted to and the brutal thug of an aide Francis, played by Johnny Flynn. They suspect a mole is snitching on them and a cassette with crucial information turning up in the mail will prove who the mole is. Over the course of the night, the chase for the cassette slowly becomes the fulcrum that supports the lever of the narrative.

When Richie is brought in after a skirmish with the rival gang with a bullet wound, Leonard is forced by Francis to sew him up with his needle on his worktable. Tension picks up pretty early in the narrative and the night then unspools chaotically, revealing one surprising knot after another needing unravelling.

The Outfit takes place entirely indoors, perhaps because of the limitations imposed by the covid pandemic but that’s never a deterrent since the production designers clearly spotted a perfect window of opportunity.

Within the confines of a tailor’s workspace - and his tools including his priced shears salvaged from a previous fire – that hosts gleaming wooden furniture and gorgeous indoor lighting, the killings and shootings acquire an almost aesthetically pleasing voyeuristic quality, thanks to Dick Pope’s camera, supported by Alexandre Desplat’s musical score.

Quietly exuding a mysterious air of infallible authority, Rylance as tailor Leonard throws off the viewer as well as the gangsters as he quietly declares to a wounded Richie Boyle that he’s the mole. The momentary tension is diffused when Richie haughtily laughs to the face of this ostensibly weak old man who would dare embark on such a life-threatening mission to endanger himself and his business. But in the viewer’s mind, that revelation lingers on.

The film’s dialogues are peppered with delightful tailor puns in Moore and Johnathan McClain writing and as every double-cross in the script emerges, the film acquires the shades of a psychological thriller. New characters emerge in the penultimate scenes, but fortunately they only add to the momentum. Simon Russell Beale as the gangster and worried senior Boyle, Roy in search of his missing son in the middle of the night and Nikki Amuka-Bird as Violet from the rival gang speak to stupendous casting decisions.

Perfectly tailored to fit into its running time of 106 minutes, The Outfit doesn’t hem and haw or spare an extra inch of flabbiness. With every scene demanding attention and packed with blink-or-miss crucial moments, _The Outfi_t is a perfectly crafted crime drama with the unfailing charisma of an English tailor at its centre.

Rating: * * * *

Watch the trailer here

Prathap Nair is an independent culture features writer based in Germany.