The Mastermind
- Ben Pivoz
- Oct 15
- 3 min read
The Mastermind is a period piece character study about a very amateur criminal. It is a methodically paced account of a man who seems to have no good reason to break the law and only the roughest of plans. It is not for the money, though he does need some. It is not for the thrill. The best guess is that he is doing it for his ego. He can show the world he is more than he appears to be, without anyone even knowing. Of course, things do not turn out the way he planned.
This is not a thrilling heist movie. It is more like a French crime movie (oddly, Le Samourai came to mind): observant, meditative, logical, with a jazzy score and barely any action. This is about a guy who thinks he can casually outsmart everyone and maybe never realizes it is not as easy as he thought it would be. It is captivating because writer/director Kelly Reichardt never turns up the emotions or injects intensity. It is a subversive heist story focused on a man quietly struggling to admit he screwed up. It is incredibly rewarding for patient viewers.
In 1970s Massachusetts, with Vietnam raging and protests filling the streets, family man James hatches a plan to steal four paintings from a low security local art museum. It does not take long before it all begins to fall apart.
The Mastermind (106 minutes, without the end credits) takes place at a time of great unrest in America, yet its protagonist barely even registers it. He pays little to no attention to his wife and kids and resents his parents. There is no sense that he has a meaningful connection with anyone. Why does he plan a heist? Because he can. He is potentially blowing up his life because he doesn’t actually care about his life. Anything not directly related to his scheme means nothing to him. There is a self-deception going on that is fascinating because Reichardt’s screenplay doesn’t fill in those gaps. It treats his choices with ironic detachment. The title is how he thinks of himself, not how the movie portrays him.
Josh O’Connor is really good in a role that requires him to be less than the character thinks he is. He believes he is brilliant and charming. We see ignorance, arrogance and recklessness. When he is with other people, he seems absent. They are a means to an end. When he is alone, plotting, preparing for his next move, there is a spark to him. The world is on fire and this guy could not possibly care less. He is so preoccupied that he doesn’t realize he can’t control everything. By the end, it turns out he could hardly control anything. O’Connor has this cool charisma to him that becomes a great story tool when things collapse on him, while he is still pretending it is all fine.
The Mastermind, though set fifty or so years ago, has a lot of parallels to what America is experiencing today. Since the plot is centered tightly on James, and little else exists for him, that stuff is always on the periphery. It floats around the story, in the background and snippets of news that James absentmindedly skims as he looks to hear about himself. Kelly Reichardt is such a careful filmmaker, crafting exactly what she wants, while dropping in subtle commentary. The score itself seems to be mocking James, all the way up to the climactic punchline. This is a very smart movie that just watches as a man too clever for his own good gets overwhelmed by the world he considers himself better than.
4 out of 5
Cast:
Josh O’Connor as James Blaine Mooney
Alana Haim as Terri Mooney
Jasper Thompson as Tommy Mooney
Sterling Thompson as Carl Mooney
Written/Directed by Kelly Reichardt
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