Post by Dracula on Jun 26, 2022 16:44:00 GMT -5
The Outfit(6/12/2022)
There was a time when Mark Rylance was an elusive white whale among actors. He was primarily a stage actor who would only do movies a couple times a decade, usually in small roles. Then in 2015 he showed up in Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies and won an Oscar and from there he’s been something of a fixture in Hollywood. For a while it seemed like he’d stick to a Daniel Day-Lewis level of selectiveness and only work with prominent filmmakers like Spielberg and Nolan but I think The Outfit suggests that the quality control filters have been pretty much dropped. That’s not to say that the film looked completely moribund from moment one but it’s a loopy little crime thriller from an unproven director. The film is about a tailor who caters to the local mafia in Chicago who one night finds himself in a bit of a tense standoff with some of the local criminals he’s come to know. That does not strike me as a terrible compelling high concept and honestly I’m not sure how this got the green light, it sure seems like the kind of mid-level adult drama that doesn’t get made anymore and frankly it’s the kind of mid-level adult drama that gives the rest of them a bad name. The film doesn’t feel like a terribly authentic look at the 50s mafia; it’s in an odd place where it’s too heightened to feel real but not heightened enough to be interesting. It gets a touch more compelling in its second half but not enough to save the film, it’s just a movie too mediocre to get a pass.
** out of Five
There was a time when Mark Rylance was an elusive white whale among actors. He was primarily a stage actor who would only do movies a couple times a decade, usually in small roles. Then in 2015 he showed up in Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies and won an Oscar and from there he’s been something of a fixture in Hollywood. For a while it seemed like he’d stick to a Daniel Day-Lewis level of selectiveness and only work with prominent filmmakers like Spielberg and Nolan but I think The Outfit suggests that the quality control filters have been pretty much dropped. That’s not to say that the film looked completely moribund from moment one but it’s a loopy little crime thriller from an unproven director. The film is about a tailor who caters to the local mafia in Chicago who one night finds himself in a bit of a tense standoff with some of the local criminals he’s come to know. That does not strike me as a terrible compelling high concept and honestly I’m not sure how this got the green light, it sure seems like the kind of mid-level adult drama that doesn’t get made anymore and frankly it’s the kind of mid-level adult drama that gives the rest of them a bad name. The film doesn’t feel like a terribly authentic look at the 50s mafia; it’s in an odd place where it’s too heightened to feel real but not heightened enough to be interesting. It gets a touch more compelling in its second half but not enough to save the film, it’s just a movie too mediocre to get a pass.
** out of Five
