The Mastermind
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Writer: Kelly Reichardt
Cast: Josh O’Connor, Alana Haim, Bill Camp, Hope Davis, Eli Gelb, Cole Doman, Javion Allen, John Magaro, Amanda Plummer
Seen on: 31.10.2025

Plot:
James Blaine Mooney (Josh O’Connor) is an architect with a wife, Terri (Alana Haim), and two kids (Sterling Thompson, Jasper Thompson). They spend a lot of time at the local museum – and for a reason, even if the rest of the family doesn’t know it: Mooney is plotting to steal some of the paintings there. When he pulls the heist off in broad daylight, he thinks that he has made it, but it turns out that the theft is only the beginning of his trouble.

I was curious about this film due to both the plot and O’Connor’s presence, but I was also a little weary, because Kelly Reichardt and I just aren’t on the same page aesthetically, at least for the most part. Unfortunately, The Mastermind was once again proof of the rule and no exception from it: it didn’t work for me at all.

The Mastermind is a movie about a heist, but it is not a heist movie in the genre sense. There is no intricate plotting to the robbery – even if Mooney likes to believe otherwise. There are no clever plot twists, no bells and whistles. It is a movie about a man who thinks that he is brilliant because the security at the museum is incompetent (and it is the 70s and there is no electronic surveillance). The movie is well aware of that dichotomy – of Mooney’s view of himself and what is actually going on. But once it has established that, I didn’t feel like it went anywhere.

It is a slow-moving film, as all of Reichardt’s movies are. There is a lot of beige. Political circumstances like the Vietnam War are included to underscore the small pond Mooney finds himself in and where he thinks he is a big fish. But once he makes the jump into the ocean that is the world outside of his town, he starts to find out just how small he really is.

The problem is that I was so bored during the film that I actually couldn’t stay awake. (I actually thought about classifying this film as DNF, but I didn’t sleep that much.) O’Connor’s presence is strong enough it makes Mooney’s successes so far believeable, but it isn’t enough to keep me actually interested in Mooney’s fate.

And that is just what usually happens with me and Reichardt – her sense of pacing, the rhythm she finds for her films, the things she focuses on: all of that just doesn’t speak to me (with Certain Women the great exception. That and Diego Luna will make me watch First Cow yet, I am afraid). I can’t get into it. I couldn’t get into The Mastermind, that’s for sure.

Summarizing: not for me.