"The Mastermind:" A Heist Film That Steals Its Own Momentum

There is a part of me that is ashamed to admit that The Mastermind was my introduction to Kelly Reichardt. Her past couple of films just happened to be released at inopportune times for me, I missed out on seeing them, and they’ve fallen to the wayside. Fom what I’ve heard about her style, her films sound exactly like my cup of tea, and when it comes to The Mastermind, I thought the same thing was in store. A deconstruction of the heist film starring Josh O’Connor in a 1970s autumn landscape? Sign me up! Unfortunately, beyond the forty minute mark or so, it feels like the film repeats its thesis statement over and over again in different fonts before culminating in admittedly one of my favorite closing shots of the year.

Josh O’Connor leads The Mastermind as JB Mooney, an unemployed, amateur art thief who plans the rest of his life around his first big heist. But when things don’t go as planned, he’s left completely astray. 

Mooney himself lives a pretty drab existence already. His wife (Alana Haim) hates him, his kids are an inconvenience in his life, and he consistently borrows money from his Mom because it seems like he’s burned nearly every other bridge in his life. All of this is really compelling for about thirty minutes as we see Mooney do everything in his power to set up for what he believes will be a generational wealth-generating scam. The actual heist itself is quite funny, as it's shot primarily using mediums and wides with very few cuts. The lack of kinetic energy in the edit here is a subversion of genre tropes that largely works. Even from the little expertise I have of Reichardt’s minimalistic style, she uses it all to her advantage in those moments. 

The film was shot on 16mm, which paired with the Eastern autumn, 70s landscape is a recipe for an utter feast on the eyes. Even in the more mundane moments, there was very little I wanted more than to crawl through the screens and wear one of the sweaters the characters on screen were sporting. 

The score utilizes classic Jazz conventions of the time to juxtapose the mundanity of the setting, but also accentuate the quiet chaos of it all. It’s one of my favorite scores of the year, and there’s hardly a definable theme in the music. It feels as if it’s been transplanted from a completely different project and overlaid onto this one. That may sound like it’s a dig on the score, but given how much I enjoyed it, I actually mean that description as a compliment. It shouldn’t really work…but it definitely does.

If it seems like I’m grasping at straws to find things to talk about, that’s because I am. I got so little out of this film, aside from the things that I just mentioned, that talking about the film feels a lot more challenging to me than if I just outright hated it. There’s not a lot here that the film gets wrong necessarily. On a technical level, pretty much everything is at the very least adequate. I suppose my biggest issue with the film is how overly repetitive the plot progression is, and how little I found myself caring about this man, or any of the people surrounding him. 

There is an interesting commentary happening here surrounding not only people who think criminal masterminds of themselves, but of heist films as a subgenre. The film seeks to expose the mundanity and borderline unintelligence of heists as a concept by committing a total 180 on expectations for a film of its type. But in doing so, it forgets to make the stuff it fills that void with compelling in the slightest. 

Beyond the forty minute mark, the film is a barrage of loosely connected moments of Mooney borrowing money, confronting people he may have wronged, sleeping on couches, calling his wife, apologizing for his actions and never changing, etc. etc. etc. In essence, it kind of is exactly how you would expect a film like this to play out…but without any sort of nuance to the characters at hand. 

I mentioned earlier that the closing shot is one of my favorites of the year, and offers some quietly damning commentary about the setting the film takes place in. That still rings true, but the more I think about it, the more I think that it would have had the exact same effect on me if the film were even an hour shorter than it is. The messaging in the closing moments feels largely divorced from Mooney’s journey that it could have been placed in an entirely different film with an entirely different story, and been even more powerful. 

If you’re a Kelly Reichardt fan it’s pretty clear from commentary I’ve already seen that you’re probably going to eat this up. There’s been people comparing this film to Heat in terms of intensity compared to the rest of her minimalistic filmography, but in all honesty, her other films seem way more appealing to me than this one. I’m curious how much in the general minority I will end up being, but for now the most astute observation I got out of The Mastermind was that Josh O’Connor, while being a brilliant actor, has about three roles left before he fully morphs into a stylish rat that plays the violin.