The film The Outfit (The tailor) opens with a voice explaining that designing a garment is more complex than it seems. After steps such as taking measurements and cutting, several distinct layers, including cotton and wool, are superimposed and then sewn together. At the same time, in the image, we follow a tailor in his shop, from the storefront to the workshop, passing through the fitting room. This is a clever way of establishing that the story will also go beyond appearances; that it will be “more complex than it seems”. The same can be said of the narrator.
Unfortunately, nothing thereafter will prove as ingenious as this opening sequence. Certainly, The Outfit is elegantly designed, but after such an introduction, we expected more from what turns out to be a somewhat stuck-up exercise in style.
The film’s protagonist is Leonard, an English tailor who immigrated to Chicago and whose shop has become the drop-off point for the correspondence of a gangster, Big Roy. One turbulent night, Leonard finds himself caught in the crossfire—literally—after Roy’s son and lieutenant take refuge in his business.
Divided into as many acts as there are “layers” in the clothes that the protagonist makes, the film highlights the various actors in a successive and intimate way facing Leonard, who is, without pun intended, the driver of this camera confined to his shop.
In this regard, if The Outfit seduces with its old-fashioned charm (and the chic costumes of Zac Posen) summoning the memory of film noir and gangster of yesteryear, it disappoints on the other hand in its execution. Oscar-winning screenwriter for The Imitation Game (The imitation game), Graham Moore is taking his first steps as a director here, and his direction gives off an impression of caution rather than assurance or mastery. The film has a starched, static side.
Precisely, and without sacrificing the idea of sober visual elegance associated with the main character, the realization would have benefited from being more kinetic, even including a handful of formal pieces of bravery. As a counterexample, we can mention Boundby the Wachowski sisters, another exercise in style inspired by film noir and gangsters, and whose minimalist canvas in no way hindered technical inventiveness.
Epilogue and post-epilogue
For lack of a better expression, The Outfit is too cushy to really captivate. And that, despite a typically terrific central portrayal from supporting Oscar-winning Mark Rylance for Bridge of Spies (The Bridge of Spies). As an employee involved in the affair despite herself, Zoey Deutch also pulls out of the game, but the other actors prove to be unequal, especially Simon Russell Beale, the uncharismatic chief gangster.
Co-written by Moore and Jonathan McClain, the screenplay is also not as crafty as it seems to be. In that the plot, which is based on a series of reversals sometimes surprising, sometimes expected, culminates in a great revelation which will not really be one for anyone who has seen one or two films. Knowing this, the explanatory montage responsible for explaining what happened only seems more impressive.
There follows an epilogue and then a “post-epilogue” whose existence serves less the film than the starting metaphor: someone, somewhere, had trouble cutting. However, this coat would have needed adjustments.