‘The Mastermind’ REVIEW: Quiet, high-stakes, and subversive
‘The Mastermind’ REVIEW: Quiet, high-stakes, and subversive
Josh O’Connor as J.B. Mooney / Photo taken from Artnet.com
You've heard of this year’s Louvre heist. There are so many films about art heists that it feels almost inevitable that this would happen. And yet somehow, it was still shocking to all of us. Kelly Reichardt’s newest offering, The Mastermind, feels like an answer to the question of “What would happen if an ordinary person committed an art heist?” Not a Danny Ocean kind of a guy, but a regular dad who gets his slightly flaky pals to do the heist with him.
If you’re looking for a traditional heist film, filled with tension and quick cuts, you won’t find it here. In a way, The Mastermind is a subversion of the heist film. The tension comes from the anticipation of what could happen next. The film loves to linger on events in Reichardt’s trademark style, such as the waiting for the bumbling art thieves to make it out to the getaway car.
The start of the film features opening credits playing over an extended scene where Josh O’Connor’s J.B. cases the Framingham Museum of Art. It’s set to a jazz score by Rob Mazurek that flows beautifully throughout the movie. The music adds a certain rhythm to J.B. 's actions, swinging from calming to frenetic at points, and was one of my favorite aspects of the film.
With a title like The Mastermind, one would probably expect Josh O’ Connor’s J.B. Mooney to be one. Instead, he is a hapless, directionless man who tries to pull off the heist because he has this ambition to be greater than the life he’s currently living. He pushes away stable jobs, borrows too much money from his parents, and neglects his wife and children, all because he thinks he’ll get away with it.
In so many scenes, there is a restlessness to J.B. that never seems settled in the life he has built, and O’Connor plays him in a way that makes him both sympathetic and infuriating. You watch him make all the wrong choices, and yet somehow you’re hoping against hope that he gets away with it.
Josh O’Connor as J.B. Mooney and Javion Allen as Ronnie Gibson / Taken from MUBI Notebook
For some who are not a fan of slower-paced films or unfamiliar with Reichardt’s style, this film might be a bit of a challenge to sit through. As I mentioned, it lingers in the moments in between the big events that happen, like a montage of J.B. waving his children goodbye, or the drive after the heist happens. It examines the effects of the heist on J.B.’s relationships and life, rather than the heist itself.
I have to give a lot of credit to Josh O’Connor, who kept me so invested in what was going to happen to J.B. It’s another tick in him playing a loser, but God, he does it so well. There’s also something about the way he is able to look at art that makes me feel like he is longing for a certain piece to be his that worked perfectly in La Chimera and works again here.
Overall, The Mastermind is an interesting, slower-paced film with simple stakes that work in its favor. It feels like a held breath you take before a big jump. That sensation you get when you feel the urge to do something completely illogical because you’re bored, or just to see if you can. It’s about the aftermath of something so ridiculous that it blows up your whole life… and I was glued to the screen for every second of it.
‘The Mastermind’ was part of the 2025 QCinema International Film Festival’s lineup under the Screen International program.
