Film / The Outfit

Theatrical release poster

Everyone has something up their sleeve.

— Tagline

The Outfit is a 2022 American psychological crime drama thriller film directed by Graham Moore in his directorial debut from a screenplay by Moore and Johnathan McClain. The film stars an ensemble cast including Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Johnny Flynn, Dylan O'Brien, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Simon Russell Beale.

Leonard Burling is an English "cutter" who makes suits in Chicago during The '50s. Trained in London's famous Savile Row and a master of his craft, Leonard must nonetheless tolerate the presence of an Irish Mob drop box in his shop. One fateful night, he gets swept up in underworld events and must think quickly to stay alive.

Examples:

• The '50s: The film takes place in 1956.
• Affably Evil: Roy Boyle has a paternal and almost gentle personality, but he freely admits that he's lost track of the number of people he's killed.
• Batman Gambit: Leonard begins to subtly suggest to Richie that Francis could be the rat, depending on Richie's paranoia to cause him to try and kill Francis rather than take the time to think it over.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Leonard is a quiet and humble suitmaker who just wants to practice his craft in peace. When the mob gets mixed up in his business, however, he proves surprisingly cunning. In the end, it's revealed that he's a retired killer.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Francis. The enforcer of the Boyle gang who kills the son of the gang's leader in a moment of panic. Leonard strokes his ego to convince him he can use the incident to take full control of crime in Chicago. In the end, he was just a fall guy.
• Bittersweet Ending: In the end, all of the criminal gangs will be destroyed by the evidence that Mable has collected, and Mable gets to live her dream of traveling the world. Leonard succeeds in his goals, but he's left alone, wounded, and with only a suitcase of possessions to start over with.
• Boom, Headshot!: Francis kills Richie by blowing his brains out with a revolver, though the kill is mostly offscreen.
• Bottle Episode: Other than seeing people arrive and leave at the front door, every scene takes place inside Leonard's suit shop.
• Chekhov's Gun: If you don't suspect that Leonard's shears are going to find an alternative use before the film is done, you haven't seen many movies.
• The Chessmaster: Leonard initially appears to be nothing more than a humble cutter, but hidden behind those bespectacled eyes is a ruthlessly cunning mind. He is eventually revealed to have been manipulating everyone, including Mable, as part of a plan to destabilise the organised crime in the area by playing the gangs against each other, then leaking enough evidence to the FBI to mop up what's left.
• Comically Missing the Point: There's a rare bit of levity when Roy Boyle tries to explain the Outfit to Leonard.
  Roy: Have you heard of the Outfit?
  Leonard: Well, I make clothes, so...
  Roy: Not that kind of outfit. It's an organization.
  Leonard: What, like the Rotary Club?
  Roy: Maybe you've heard of Al Capone?
  Leonard: Him, I've heard of.
  Roy: He started it.
  Leonard: The Rotary Club?!
• Cruel and Unusual Death: When Francis and Richie get into a brief firefight, the former shoots the latter through the throat, causing him to stumble around in agony for a minute before collapsing, desperately trying to stop the bleeding as he chokes on his own blood. Fortunately, he's finished off with a shot to the head courtesy of Francis.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Leonard, on top of having fought in the Great War, lost his wife and daughter in a huge fire that consumed his old shop in England. It's also later revealed that he was an enforcer for the London mob, with his old gang setting fire to the shop after they discovered where he had been living. Since arriving in Chicago, Leonard has been trying to quietly put his past behind him so he can live the rest of his life in peace.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • Mable had a bad relationship with her father, who is implied to have been a crook. He died when she was young, and it's implied that the Boyles killed him.
  • It's not revealed what happened to Francis's father, but he wasn't in the picture when Roy became a Parental Substitute to him.
• Double-Meaning Title: "The Outfit" refers both to the suits that Burling makes and to the criminal organizatons (also known a "crime outfits", allá the Chicago Outfit) he's tangled with.
• Driving Question: Who is the traitor within the Boyle family? The answer is none of them. Mable, Richie's girlfriend, had been leaking information to the gang's enemies and the FBI. And Leonard was helping her.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Barring the first twenty minutes or so, the entire film takes place over the course of a single night.
• Gambit Roulette: Leonard starts manipulating the gangsters and must think quickly on his feet through ever-changing circumstances to stay alive. It turns out that a lot of this was pre-planned, but he couldn't anticipate every eventuality.
• Generic Ethnic Crime Gang: The Boyles are The Irish Mob, while the La Fontaines are French Black Mafia.
• Gory Discretion Shot: When Francis shoots Richie in the head, it's framed in a way so that the kill is offscreen, sparing the audience from any gruesome details. Richie's face isn't shown up close for the remainder of the movie.
• Insistent Terminology: Leonard is a cutter, not a tailor. A tailor simply sews things together, while a cutter builds every part of an outfit.
• The Irish Mob: Leonard's first customer was Irish mob boss Roy Boyle, who quickly took a liking to him and helped his shop get off the ground. However, in return, Leonard has to tolerate a drop box installed in his work room, with goons filtering in every day to deliver envelopes of cash for Roy.
• Irony: Leonard left England to finally escape it's criminal underworld and start fresh after his wife and child were murdered by gangsters. The day he opened his shop in Chicago, his very first customer just so happened to be the boss of an Irish mob family, who was so impressed by Leonard's craft that he made him the gang's official suit maker, inadvertently putting Leonard right back where he started. He even lampshades it when revealing his past to Francis.
• It Will Never Catch On: Leonard dismisses blue jeans as a temporary fashion fad.
• It Works Better with Bullets: Leonard claims that he stole the bullets from Francis's gun, causing him to glance at the chambers of the revolver just long enough for the two La Fontaine goons to shoot him.
• Just a Flesh Wound:
  • Richie is shot in the gut and, after being sewed up, seems none the worse for wear. He casually walks around the suit shop and sits with legs crossed while lucidly holding conversations.
  • Leonard gets shot in the arm, but after a few moments, it seems to stop affecting him.
• Made of Iron: Francis. In the backstory, he survived six gunshots while guarding Roy. He later survives two in the back and still manages to have enough wherewithal to make one last attempt on Leonard's life.
• Manipulative Bastard: Leonard has to survive the night by playing the Boyle family against each other. In fact, he had been doing so for months, deliberately ratcheting tensions to a boil, and when it comes time for him to dismantle the gang, he does so with nothing more than casual words of warning or seemingly absent-minded musings.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Violet La Fontaine is French, erudite, and dressed to the nines. She also knows the proper French term for a cutter and seems to appreciate the distinction that Leonard puts on it.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The would-be boss of Chicago is named "Roy," meaning "royal" or "king."
  • Richie is a rich kid, in contrast to the former street rat Francis.
• Mexican Standoff: Francis points his gun at Violet while her two goons point their guns at him. The impasse is broken by an action from Leonard.
• Minimalism: There are never more than five or six people onscreen.
• Neighborhood-Friendly Gangsters: Roy Boyle sees his organization this way. He claims that he's created "a neighborhood" by building his empire. Mable firmly disagrees, seeing his organization as a blight on the community.
• Not Quite Dead: One of the few things to surprise Leonard is the fact that Francis wasn't killed by the La Fontaines. He stands up in the film's climax.
• Once More, with Clarity:
  • During a montage of Leonard and Mable doing business at Leonard's shop, we see Mable lead a bespectacled man into Leonard's back room as if presenting it to him. This seems like a normal part of their business, but in the end it's revealed that the man is an FBI agent, and she's showing him where she hid a tape recorder in Leonard's back room.
  • During another montage, this time of various gangsters depositing illegal earnings into the drop box, we're given a brief shot of an unseen man, supposedly another gangster, dropping an envelope marked with the Outfit's brass ring into the box. Near the end of the film, we're shown that same moment, only this time it's revealed that Leonard actually placed the envelope inside as part of his plan to bring down the Boyle gang.
• Open Heart Dentistry: Leonard, who knows how to sew suits, is called upon to sew up Richie's bullet wounds.
• Parental Substitute: Discussed.
  • Mable overtly tells Leonard that she does not need him looking out for her, almost coming to the point of reminding him that he's not her father, but she ultimately demurs to say the last part out loud. Mable's actual father was wayward and died when she was young. For his part, Leonard counters that he understands that "you're not my... you know."
  • Francis was a street urchin who took six bullets for Roy Boyle and got taken in as a surrogate son. Richie clearly feels threatened by how close Francis is with his father. Mable assumes that they're cousins.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Richie tells Leonard how Roy taught him how to tie a tie when he was four years old, and told him, "A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life." Leonard identifies the quote as being by Oscar Wilde, but Richie thinks Leonard is talking about someone who lives in the neighborhood.
• The Reveal:
  • Mable was the mob informant.
  • Leonard orchestrated everything, including the Outfit letters.
  • Leonard turns out to be a Retired Monster.
• Retired Monster: Leonard turns out to have been a dangerous mob enforcer during his youth, rolling up his sleeves to reveal various tattoos on his arms. One day, Leonard decided he couldn't do it anymore and tried to settle down. After his old gang found him and murdered his family, he ran away to America to start a new life.
• Sarcastic Confession: Subverted. Leonard tells the wounded Richie that he is the mob informant, but Richie just takes it as a joke, and Leonard plays it off. However, it turns out that Mable was the informant, something Leonard knew.
• Samus Is a Girl: La Fontaine, whose gender and first name are hidden until the third act, is revealed to be a woman.
• The Summation: Leonard delivers one when he reveals the identity of the traitor. It's Mabel. And he always knew.
• Tattooed Crook: When Leonard reveals that he used to be a hired killer, he rolls up his sleeves to reveal that his forearms are covered in tattoos.
• Trash the Set: Leonard's suit shop goes up in flames in the end.
• Uncertain Doom: After Mable informs the La Fontaines where Boyle and Monk will be going, it's assumed by everyone that they will be killed upon arrival, but it's never confirmed by the end of the film.
• Unwitting Pawn: Everyone was being manipulated by Leonard into doing exactly what he wanted. Even Mable. All to ensure the destruction of all organized crime gangs in the area.