The Latin proverb “vestis virum facit,” roughly translated in English to “clothes make the man,” was included in “Adagia” — a collection of Greek and Latin proverbs published in 1500 by Dutch philosopher and theologian Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus.

In the collection, Erasmus followed the saying with a quote from Roman educator Quintilian, “To dress within the formal limits and with an air gives men, authority.” This sentiment is at the heart of Graham Moore’s directorial debut “The Outfit,” a handsome and tidy little crime drama about the dealings of a seemingly mousy clothier with a Chicago mob family in the 1950s.

Never Leaves the Suit Shop

The action of the movie never leaves a man’s bespoke suit shop tucked into the end of a small, snowy street. The gliding, elegant camerawork by masterful cinematographer Dick Pope helps it not feel like a stage play and forces the audience to become intimate with every cravat and chair.

The shop is run by Leonard Burling (Mark Rylance) an ex-pat from London who worked on Saville Row until, as he jokes, blue jeans came into fashion and the call for tailored suits went down. Burling is not a tailor, but a cutter, and gets rather offended when he is mistaken for someone who mends buttons.

The sole other employee is the receptionist Mabel (Zoey Deutch) with whom Burling has developed a father-daughter relationship and the hope that one day she will take over the shop.

Appearance deceives throughout the entirety of “The Outfit,” and that includes the very look of the shop. Nothing seems to be able to pull the fastidious Burling away from the fabric and cutting shears, not even the gangsters that use the shop as a drop-off point and happen to be his most prominent customers; that is until two goodfellas come bleeding into the shop — livewire Richie (Dylan O’Brien), who also happens to be Mabel’s paramour, and Francis (Johnny Flynn). To make matters worse, the two believe that there’s a rat in the organization and that the suit shop may be bugged by the FBI.

The script bursts with double-crosses, twists and reveals that are not as clever as they think themselves to be. Many of them are predicated on information that is withheld from the audience until the very last second, and miss a crucial feeling of logical progression.

This is not a work of clockwork precision. Instead of allowing the new pieces of information to reveal character and land as pieces of emotional impact, they are forced to retrofit and realign the plot. The reveals come in a playful and fun manner that make it engaging to watch. It’s the sort of movie that one’s middle-aged parents will watch on Netflix and say over the closing credits, “Oh, wasn’t that clever. I could never guess what would happen next.”

Specifically Tailored for Rylance

Just as the suits in Burling’s shop are tailored especially for the wearer, so was Burling especially tailored for Mark Rylance. A brilliant, mesmerizing actor, Rylance has a gift for playing the internal gears twisting around in his head against an external serenity and conveying multiple, contradictory emotions through his eyes. He is never less than fascinating than when the audience is trying to determine whether his modesty is a put-on and when he is bluffing or not, like in his Oscar-winning turn in Steven Spielberg’s 2015 “Bridge of Spies.”

Rylance’s performance as Leonard is restrained and calculating, telling you just as much about the character through the way he picks up a pair of shears or lights a cigarette through a monologue. Rylance has a terrific scene with Simon Russell Beale, another outstanding actor as an Irish mob boss that suspensefully swings between threatening and genteel entirely through acting choices.

“The Outfit” never quite measures up, but Rylance certainly does.

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@abovemegan