A Dylan O'Brien jag from Send Help (2026). He's a bit more lively here but still not great. Directed by Graham Moore (his first time) from a script he co-wrote with Johnathan McClain. Apparently Moore got an Oscar for the script he adapted for The Imitation Game (2015).
Actually the draw was Mark Rylance who I remember was quite good in Bridge of Spies (2015) (a performance for which he won an Oscar). As a snooty English tailor in gangland Chicago in 1956 he puts the rest of the cast firmly in the shade, excepting perhaps Irish mob boss Simon Russell Beale (The Death of Stalin (2017)). The plot is quite trashy: Rylance and receptionist/gamine Zoey Deutch ostensibly get on with their bespoke-clothes business while the gangsters get on with theirs, but of course things veer off course in a way that would be unimaginable in the Phantom Thread (2017) universe.
It mostly goes agreeably but every so often drops its pseudo-realism with unlikely exposition dumps; Hitchcock did a far better job with that aspect in Rope (1948) and as with Jimmy Stewart it is not possible that Rylance is harmless. Conversely his main interlocutor, scarface Johnny Flynn (who wants to be James Wood when he grows up), may plausibly have thought so, partly because England does snobbery like no other culture. The holes in the plot — just why do they not even start torturing Deutch? — ruined it for me, as did the self-congratulatory conclusion that slid towards a zombie flick. Given the very limited sets I wondered if it may have worked better as a stage show. Dick Pope did the cinematography.
Manohla Dargis: "a moderately amusing gangster flick that doesn’t make a great deal of sense." It is a relief when glamour puss Nikki Amuka-Bird enters the story. Stephanie Zacharek. Calling Rylance's tailor "humble" illustrates the culture gap.
