Search icon

Movies & TV

12th Feb 2024

Netflix has quietly added one of the greatest gangster movies of recent years

Stephen Porzio

the outfit

Directed by and starring Oscar winners, the gangster thriller has an 85% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Netflix has just added The Outfit, one of the best gangster movies of recent years, to its service.

Set in 1956 Chicago, the film follows an English tailor named Leonard (Oscar-winner Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies) who owns a shop in the US city where he makes beautiful clothes for the only people that can afford them – a vicious mobster family.

One fateful night, however, Leonard finds himself entangled in the crime family’s business, whose demands of the tailor have him “stitching up more than just their wardrobes”.

Released in 2022, The Outfit was co-written and directed by Graham Moore (another Oscar-winner for his screenplay for The Imitation Game) and features a great ensemble cast including Dylan O’Brien (The Maze Runner), Johnny Flynn (One Life), Nikki Amuka-Bird (Knock at the Cabin), Simon Russell Beale (The Death of Stalin) and Zoey Deutch (Set It Up).

Taking place entirely within Leonard’s tailor shop, the movie earned very strong reviews from critics for its inventive, twisty screenplay – as well as its stylish direction and terrific performances.

The Outfit

Mark Rylance in gangster thriller The Outfit, now streaming on Netflix

Boasting an 85% Rotten Tomatoes score, here’s some of the raves the film received:

Empire: “The Outfit follows a pattern set by countless gangster flicks of the past, but its freshness is in the intelligence and surprise of the script. Like a well-made suit, it’s not old-fashioned — it’s classic.”

Little White Lies: “Given its sartorially suggestive title, it’s apt that The Outfit is an elegant and stylish thriller.”

RogerEbert.com: “Movies rarely come as chic as The Outfit, a thrifty, continually unpredictable whodunit, fashioned with the same meticulousness found in the bones of a deceptively simple suit.”

Time: “The pleasures of writer-director Graham Moore’s intimate little crime thriller The Outfit sneak up on you with the same glissando shiver that you feel when you slip on a silk-lined coat.”

Tribune News Service: “A twisty, blood-soaked chamber piece, a retro gangster noir as meticulously crafted as a fine custom suit.”

And though The Outfit was not a hit at the box office, it is sure to become a cult favourite on streaming for crime movie lovers.

The film is available to watch on Netflix in Ireland and the UK right now. For US readers, it can be viewed on Starz.

Read more:

LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge