At the Angelika Film Center last week, I went to see The Mastermind, a 2025 heist film written and directed by Kelly Reichardt. The film is loosely based on a 1972 heist of the Worcester Art Museum, while being inspired by the heist films of Jean-Pierre Melville, known for films like Bob le flambeur (1956) and Le Samouraï (1967). The film centers on James Blaine "J.B." Mooney (Josh O'Connor), an unemployed carpenter who lives with his wife Terri (Alana Haim) and two young sons (Sterling and Jasper Thompson) in Framingham, MA, in the early 1970s, and plots to steal four Arthur Dove paintings from a small local museum that he frequents, where one of the guards is frequently sleeping while on duty. He tests the limits in the opening sequence, where, while one of his sons is rattling off trivia facts to his mom, J.B. lifts open a protective case and pockets a small figurine, and keeps his distance from his family in the museum, pretending not to know them until he joins them outside.
Since he's a regular at the museum, he doesn't want to be the one in the museum stealing the paintings, so he arranges a crew to pull off the heist. He borrows money from his mother (Hope Davis), who is skeptical that he will pay it back since he's already borrowed money before, under the pretense of using it for work so he can pay the men for the heist job. One man backs out of being the getaway driver, so J.B. acts as the driver, while the other two men, without any sense of discreetness, bust into the museum during the day with pantyhose on their heads to brazenly steal paintings off the wall and threaten a teenage girl with a gun and beat up a security guard.
Despite the public nature of the crime, J.B. displays one of the stolen paintings in his living room, and hides the other paintings in the loft of a barn. But police are inquiring his family, one of the thieves is arrested for a bank robbery, and J.B's judge father (Bill Camp) criticizes the thieves for their rookie mistakes and lack of ambition. Soon, it becomes more apparent that J.B. will be found out as the ringleader of the crime, and he doesn't have any real follow-up plans for after the heist is completed.
I liked how this film is very slow-paced, but still quietly funny, and how O'Connor could be captivating in playing a character who seems boring on the surface, but is this fascinatingly inept loser. The film's backdrop is set against the Vietnam War and counterculture movement, where J.B. is rebelling against his family's middle-class background by doing something wild and exciting, but doesn't think of other options in his life or what to do afterwards. He takes advantage of his wife and kids, expecting them to be understanding, as well as borrows money from his mother, knowing he won't bother to try to pay her back. He takes advantage of the women in his life, assuming they'll have his back and be his support to his status as a privileged white man.
I was happy to see Gaby Hoffmann in a small supporting role as Maude, J.B.'s art school friend and wife of his friend Fred (John Magaro). She has this wryness and bullshit-detector vibe to her that I really liked, and when J.B. briefly stays at their home while on the run from his crime, she does call him out on putting her and Fred at risk for harboring a fugitive, and makes him leave the next day to avoid taking further advantage of them. Hoffmann doesn't act too often anymore, although this year she also appears in the Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere as Springsteen's mother Adele, so it's nice to see her whenever she pops up in something.
The film has a great score with snappy jazz music composed by Rob Mazurek, I really dug the music throughout the film.
Reichardt has always been good at finding the humor in small moments in life, and doing introspective character studies in her films, like in First Cow (2019) Certain Women (2016), and Meek's Cutoff (2010). She has a very special and unique touch to her work that I've always appreciated, and I was happy to check out her latest film.
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