The Mastermind, Art Heists, and America Adrift
Look, there’s just something about art heists. About two minutes into Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, Josh O’Connor’s James Blaine (JB) Mooney steps behind a display case in his local art museum. He’s casual, his glance at the room an afterthought, as his mouth shifts slightly into a smirk. Rob Mazurek’s jazzy score kicks in with playful percussion, and JB lightly flicks a key to unlock the case. All he steals is a small figurine, but he’s clearly having a good time—and so am I.
Two days after watching Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, I flew to Paris to spend a week on holiday. While I was there, thieves stole French crown jewels out of the Louvre. I solemnly swear this was all a coincidence—I was an entire two or three blocks away at the Musee d’Orsay (and I’m pretty sure nothing was stolen from there). Is such a heist a tragedy? Maybe. Is it a crime? Obviously. But it’s also an unavoidably thrilling event to imagine and to revel in. My point is this: there’s just something about art heists.
The Louvre robbery sounds like a film script, complete with jewels, threatened guards, busted glass, inventive use of construction equipment, and a getaway on motorized scooters (which might make it the most French heist). JB’s heist in The Mastermind, though, falls quite a bit short of such theatrics. Reichardt has been chronicling minute, often marginal American stories for over three decades, and her work includes some real modern indie masterpieces (the best of which are Old Joy and First Cow). In Reichardt’s work, the elision of bombast creates a quieter space where more intricate and human characters can be encountered. If Meek’s Cutoff is akin to a slow cinema Western, The Mastermind turns an heist movie into a lackadaisically comedic portrait of a man adrift in his dreams.
JB certainly has dreams, though the source and ultimate aim of them remain unarticulated to us (and maybe to himself). It’s 1970, and his life in Framingham, Massachusetts is mundane: Terri (Alana Haim), his wife, is the main breadwinner in that she manages to hold a steady job. They, along with their two boys (Sterling and Jasper Thompson) keep a pattern of weekly meals with JB’s parents (Hope Davis and Bill Camp). But mundanity has its intrusions, and JB’s dreams create obstacles for their ability to keep normalcy afloat. A former art school student, JB can’t stop looking at those Arthur Dove paintings in Framingham’s museum.
The heist is quick and is, itself, almost mundane, but of course the aftermath doesn’t go as smoothly as one would hope, so JB finds himself on the run. He’s not as suave, resourceful, or energized as a lot of cinematic thieves, and JB mostly just catches a bus from one place to the next. As luck goes, he’s more comparable to Elliott Gould’s Marlowe in The Long Goodbye than any of Danny Ocean’s crew—constantly losing his grasp on what he’s after. This wandering finds JB eventually spiraling unintentionally into the 70s American drifter subculture. He crosses paths with draftees and draft dodgers, hears dispatches from Cambodia and reports on campus protests in the US. But his is not the impassioned dissent, revolting against the expectations laid on him by the government; he’s just there. He’d be a witness to these movements and demographics if he wasn’t so fixated on his next move.
O’Connor—who has been on a tear in recent years and shows no sign of slowing down or hitting any off note in 2025—manages to be erudite and rumpled, fleetingly calculating, only to fall back into absent-minded self-centeredness. He has his dreams, but he’s otherwise oblivious to the effect of his actions on the lives of his family or to the grander debates taking place in the country around him. The magic of the performance is O’Connor’s ability to exude charm in an otherwise listless and insincere character. For all his faults, I would still hang out with JB, even if I knew he would just end up asking me for money (again). O’Connor also nails comedic timing and responses—The Mastermind is frequently interrupted by weird, funny moments, be it Hope Davis calmly cracking an ear of corn in half or one of the most well timed vomits in a film.
JB’s journey allows Reichardt to take an oblique angle on contested American life in the time period of Vietnam and an expanding counterculture. She’s one of the best at this mode of observation and commentary: First Cow makes a substantial critique of the intersection of capitalism and racial dynamics in the American West, and Meek’s Cutoff is undergirded by feminist and indigenous themes. The Mastermind isn’t out to make a grand, cutting statement on the Nixon era (Reichardt knows countless movies have done so vigorously), but the film opens up space for questions about a nation adrift in two senses. The country, as a whole, seems at sea like JB—uncertain and only partially motivated to achieve its global dreams, aloof about the consequences of such actions. Yet in enforcing the participation in those dreams, the nation creates a wayward generation, some who are lost to the violence and disillusionment of war, others who are lost in running away from it and whom society makes no room for.
The Mastermind is about the consequences of following dreams that haven’t really been thought through. But it’s also just a story about a helplessly endearing and hopelessly prideful thief who attempts to weasel his way through his relationships. Throw in a moody score and the grainy quality of Reichardt’s simple yet lovely imagery, and The Mastermind is a great time. It’s also the coziest movie of the year, with a prevalence of wool that puts Knives Out to shame (and features the quirky choice to have JB rock boxers and a sweater—multiple times). Simply put, The Mastermind is a well crafted, thoughtful film that rewards you at any level you want to engage it on: genre, craft, social critique, performance, or just entertainment.
