The Mastermind ★★★

In 1972, two masked men walked into the Worcester Art Museum and stole four paintings in broad daylight. Though not depicting those exact events, writer and director Kelly Reichardt was inspired by them for The Mastermind. Following James Blaine Mooney (Josh O’Connor), The Mastermind is an exercise in cosmic irony, delivered to a man negligent in every duty ascribed to him. He is married to Terri (Alana Haim) with whom he has two young sons, though much of the parenting is handled by Terri with James’s main job being to close the garage door after Terri leaves with the boys in the morning. The son of the wealthy Judge William Mooney (Bill Camp), James is an art school dropout who longed to be an architect in his youth and still hears from his father and mother Sarah (Hope Davis) about his classmates’ success and bewilderment over why he does not get the same opportunities. After spending considerable time in the local art museum, James realizes that it could be an easy mark for a robbery. He tests it by stealing a small figurine, an act that goes completely undetected. Emboldened, he puts together plans for a larger heist of paintings with the help of a trio of co-conspirators.

As is the case with Reichardt’s filmography, The Mastermind is never in a hurry. For less patient audiences or those unfamiliar with her style, it will feel tedious and overly detailed. Reichardt revels in the mundanity of James’s existence, finding its greatest thrills as he begins putting together his plans – with a level of detail rivaling the classic heist noir The Asphalt Jungle – or in a prolonged, and quite funny, scene of him hiding the paintings after the heist is completed. However, The Mastermind never allows James to feel cool or in charge. Rather, he and his delinquent friends are holed up in the basement and everyone has to hush up when Terri pops in to check in on what James is doing. The day of the heist, he tries to take his son to school only to discover, in his inattention, he missed that it is a “teacher work day” and school is closed. Everything with his plan seems to go wrong, even if the heist ultimately works through brute force. The crew he put together is flaky, irresponsible, and a threat to the job, and James himself may have identified an opportunity but he is a fool, a man who had to trick his own mother into giving him money to even fund the heist then he is left with little-to-no idea on how to actually turn it into cash. He has plenty of plans for how to get the art, but he seems content to simply hang the stolen art on his living room wall – briefly, of course, as he cannot let his wife see – and pretend he is someone wealthy enough to own such a piece.

The Mastermind is an undercutting of James at every turn. Even having him called “the mastermind” feels like a jab because his plan, for as much as he lays things out, is basically just to walk in and hope the guards do not notice or can be easily passed due to the guards’ advanced age. He does acknowledge his frequent visits to the museum make him too recognizable to pull the job, but while he is cautious with himself, his actions imperil his family. Nevertheless, he shows little regard for them, finding them and their needs little more than a nuisance, especially in the face of an opportunity that promises a chance to advance himself without exerting much effort. Coming from wealth and given every opportunity to make something out of himself, he has chosen to live a life mostly spent at home. This robbery is as much thrill seeking as it is an opportunity to steal, an opportunity to possess something that is not his own: an actually interesting life event. This is a plain, lazy, and inadequate man who may have once possessed genuine talent but is now fine coasting on whatever scraps his parents can toss his way, all while Terri moves about in the background and handles everything for the family that he neglects. He has no purpose, is largely overlooked in every facet of his life, and is simply wandering aimlessly looking for whatever it is he feels meant to do. Short on ideas, he settles for being a leech. For The Mastermind, Reichardt setting up James in this position is a chance at some incidental justice. Like a classic noir protagonist, this man on the run cannot get out of his own way. If he needs bus fare, he reads the fare sheet wrong and ends up short on cash. If his friend gives him a way to leave the country, he will turn it down to hide in the middle of a protest against Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War that is the target of a police round-up. The world, through its small incidents and oddities, is out to get James for the societal and cultural drain he has become.

The Mastermind is naturally funny, finding humor in everyday occurrences. Set in the 1970s, even the wind-up of a car window as a bumbling would-be robber tries to stash the stolen art in the trunk is funny with Reichardt and cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt lingering for every awkward moment. The scene where James hides the art and fumbles about in a tight barn loft where he accidentally knocks down the set of stairs is hysterical with Reichardt’s attention-to-detail and refusal to miss any moment making what could be a throwaway scene in another film into a true centerpiece of The Mastermind. Reichardt’s pacing sucks the natural thrill out of the heist film setup, refusing to glamorize these actions but instead enabling the audience to take a beat, separate themselves from the action, and to analyze the ails of the protagonist. Josh O’Connor is fantastic in this role, channeling much of the energy he showed in La chimera in capturing the disaffected, gloomy, and manipulative nature of this man. His words are few, but his actions and small little emotive moments express all that is needed to bring to light who James is and how he has gotten to this point in his life. The self-confident and arrogant smirk on his face as his one-time friend Maude (Gaby Hoffmann) dresses him down for what he has done is so perfect, a credit to O’Connor’s nuanced performance and a credit to Reichardt’s framing of this moment.

Set amidst the backdrop of 1970s politics with an old-timey film look and a mise en scène that reflects the overall precise detail, The Mastermind is another strong film from Kelly Reichardt. Those who struggle to connect with her films will likely find this one just as challenging, but for those who enjoy her approach to storytelling and her ability to strip back classic film tropes to reveal the nature of the characters who inhabit our world, it is immensely rewarding. This is a man who can actually rob an art museum pretty successfully, but also one who is so ill-fit for daily existence that he has no actual hope of seeing it all through, doomed to failure not by his intellect but by simply being himself.