The Outfit
★★★★
The new single-location suspense thriller featuring Oscar winner Mark Rylance “could only be more theatrical if it was shown with an intermission,” said Leslie Felperin in The Hollywood Reporter. That’s no insult. This “refreshingly grown-up” crime drama is
“as pleasingly assembled as a good crossword puzzle.” Stage veteran Rylance plays a British-born suit maker in 1956 Chicago who works for an Irish-American crime family. The soft-spoken Old World craftsman looks the other way when the gangsters use his workshop as a drop point, but everything changes on one fateful night. Unfortunately, the further the story runs, “the more noticeable its seams become,” said Siddhant Adlakha in IndieWire.com. First-time director Graham Moore, who won a screenplay Oscar for The Imitation Game, built this tale from a historical tidbit: The FBI planted its first bug in a tailor shop. But once we know there’s a rat inside the family and half the family congregates with guns loaded, too many reveals come in lengthy speeches, not action. Eventually, Rylance is asked to monologue “entire TV seasons’ worth of backstory.” Intelligent performances help to sell the plot’s contrivances, said Chris Barsanti in Slant. “Rylance’s blend of warmth, serene competence, and humility” makes his character’s ability to navigate multiple threats more believable, while Simon Russell Beale’s turn as a shrewd mob boss “reads as nearly Shakespearean in its somehow not contradictory mix of self-awareness and blind ego.” (In theaters only) R