The Outfit

This clever crime caper featuring Mark Rylance is a tidy puzzle with interlocking pieces that mesh together like a perfectly coordinated suit.

One of the joys of a largely unknown character actor winning an Oscar is they go on to be featured in bigger movies or even get to headline their own. Mark Rylance, an out-of-blue winner for “Bridge of Spies” a few years back, is one such thespian who’s seen his career gained a much higher profile, including headlining “The Outfit,” a tidy new crime caper set in 1956 Chicago.

He plays Leonard Burling, a very British tailor of fine suits for men. He’s an odd duck on the mean streets of postwar Chi-town, and much of his clientele is made up of mafioso looking to class up their act.

Mr. Burling (as he goes by) was once a star of Saville Row in London, but left during the war for calmer pastures. He is 60ish, very polite and rather meek. Flashbacks give us hints at trauma in his past that no doubt contributed to his desire to start over.

He arrives at his shop very early every morning, leaves very late, and sometimes doesn’t leave at all. In his narration, he lays out the precise nature of his craft — he would never be so fussy as to call it an art. A typical two-piece suit is in fact comprised of 38 cuts of cloth requiring no less than 228 decisions.

The most important choice, he intones, is that you must know your customer in order to serve him to perfection.