THE OUTFIT
Cert 12A ★★★★
In cinemas now
AFTER taking a swing at the feel-good Brit flick with The Phantom Of The Open, Mark Rylance returns with a role that’s tailor-made for an award-winning stage actor.
Set almost entirely in four rooms, writer-director Graham Moore’s The Outfit is a gangster movie where all the shoot-outs happen off camera.
If that feels like a waste of a big screen, the new Harry Potter prequel will be playing next door. But Rylance’s restrained turn and Moore’s twisty script offer very different kinds of thrills.
We’re in 1950s Chicago as Rylance plays meticulous English suit “cutter” Leonard
(he thinks “tailor” is beneath him) who has relocated from Savile Row. In the backroom of his oak-panelled shop, local mob boss Roy Boyle (Simon Russell Beale) has installed a drop box where his goons can deposit their ill-gotten gains.
Leonard has agreed to look the other way, as long as he and receptionist Mabel (Zoey
Deutch) don’t have to get involved in Roy’s unseemly business.
One night, the terms of that deal are breached when Roy’s son Richie (Dylan O’brien) and his enforcer Francis (Johnny Flynn) hammer on his door.
Richie has been shot in the stomach by a rival gang and Leonard is tasked with looking after a briefcase containing an incriminating tape recording that could end Roy’s reign.
As the three men size each other up, Rylance slowly picks away at the seams of this mild and seemingly harmless old gent. Leonard may not be quite as meek as he seems.
With a different actor, this could have felt painfully stagey. But Rylance’s facial expressions and sudden changes of intonation are thrillingly cinematic.