From moment to moment, Leonard has to be many things to many people - friend, ally, informant, protector - playing each side against the other just to stay alive, often with a single line of dialogue. For his part, Beale puts his pugnaciously interesting visage to good use as a mob boss who employs quiet menace, and Nikki Amuka-Bird steals the spotlight, however briefly, as a rival mobster who’s more than ready to fill the gap Boyle’s weakness presents.īut the movie is Rylance’s show through and through, Moore’s camera holding long on close-ups of his weathered face, the actor’s sad eyes masking the character’s unpredictable wit (and possibly more). That goes double for Flynn, parlaying his unconventional good looks and reedy timbre into a bad-boy capo who proves the film’s true wild card. The supporting cast is more than game for the guns-and-glory intrigue the ensemble mostly consists of established British character actors chewing their way through nasal Chi-caah-go accents with devilish glee. Who’s the rat? Will Boyle find out what’s happened to Richie, and who will he blame when he does? Who will even survive the night? And who is Leonard, really, underneath all that downcast deference? While Moore hardly changes the thriller game with the results, he still knows how to build a pleasing mechanism with the pieces he’s given himself. "The Outfit" unfurls at a pleasing pace, Moore layering one revelation on top of another and spacing out Hitchcockian twists at pitch-perfect moments. Mirroring Leonard’s own penchant for precision, Moore’s script is marvelously intricate. You don’t have to own a mobster thesaurus to figure out what Francis means when he says Richie has "a marble in his gut," and Leonard’s matter-of-fact narration over certain stretches of the film feels driven by character more than convenience - offering up thematically-fitting parables whose true nature are deliciously revealed later on. Moore, a Chicagoan himself, has a natural fluency in the wise-guy aesthetics of the city’s mafioso history, and "The Outfit" is chock-a-block with tossed-off vernacular that evokes that world without over-explaining or rendering the finely-constructed screenplay any less taut. (L to R) Johnny Flynn as "Francis", Alan Mehdizadeh as "Monk" and Zoey Deutch as "Mable" in director Graham Moore's THE OUTFIT, a Focus Features release. See "The Outfit" for: The intricate stitching of its script and performances Luckily for him (and the audience), there’s more to the nebbish wallflower than meets the eye. Leonard, now reluctantly promoted from bystander to participant, must use his wits to survive the night. Things go south late one night when hotheaded Boyle goon Francis ( Johnny Flynn of 2020’s "Emma.") carries a wounded Richie into the shop and demands that Leonard "sew him up." (After all, what’s really the difference between stitching fabric and flesh?) But this circumstance is merely the opening salvo in a turf war that involves a rat, a mysterious tape and an even more mercurial organization called - you guessed it - The Outfit, whose boss wants in on the Boyle family’s territory. Leonard prefers a life of quiet dedication to his work his only companion is his assistant Mabel ( Zoey Deutch), who longs to travel the world and has started a risky fling with Richie Boyle ( Dylan O’Brien), son of mob patriarch Rob ( Simon Russell Beale). Now he makes a decent living as a tailor - or "cutter," as he modestly clarifies - meticulously creating custom suits for his clientele, which include members of the Boyle mafia (who also use a lockbox in the back for clandestine communications amongst the "family").
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