THE MASTERMIND - Mark Reviews Movies

The Mastermind, Mubi

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 16, 2025

Stealing is easy enough, or it is, at least, for James Blaine "J.B." Mooney (Josh O'Connor), who regularly visits a local art museum, looks at the layout and the lax security of the space, and knows he can pretty much take whatever he wants out of the building. He even does a trial run of sorts in the opening sequence of The Mastermind, taking an antique figurine out of its display case right in view of a security guard. Well, the theft would be in the guard's eyeline, if not for the fact that his eyes are currently closed while he naps in a chair.

The problem for James, perhaps, is that he doesn't consider the other side stealing: the part about getting away with it. That's the rub for every thief, but when he swipes that figurine, nothing happens to James.

The sleeping guard doesn't notice, obviously. The guard at the door doesn't, either, because James is completely ordinary. The man even goes to the museum with his family when he takes that antique. If his wife knows—because he slips the figure into her purse and shows it to her after they exit the building—and his kids surely suspect that James has stolen something from the museum, James doesn't think he has to worry about them thinking less of him for doing such a deed.

Set in the early 1970s, this film, written and directed by Kelly Reichardt, is as quiet and unassuming a heist story as the protagonist himself. It is assured enough to be comfortable or, when things inevitably get out of control for James, try to be so, at least. It's not really about the robbery—of four paintings at the same museum—at the center of the story, after all, because James is barely a participant in it and it's over almost as quickly as it begins. The plot follows this guy trying to get away with something that can't be ignored or overlooked and, once that fails, just trying to have a life that won't involve him being hunted by the police.

Reichardt's approach basically lulls us into a feeling that James very well could accomplish every goal he has, overcome every challenge that he faces, and get away with his crime or, at least, evade facing any legal consequences for it. That's what every criminal wants, but for all of his easy confidence and slick improvisation, James isn't really a criminal. He's just a guy who's in over his head and is about to repeatedly find out how deep his troubles run.

After stealing the figurine, James' ambitions get the better of him. He comes up with a plan to steal a quartet of paintings by the abstract artist Arthur Dove, but unlike his earlier theft, James doesn't even make a hint of his plan to his wife Terri (Alana Haim).

The scheme is to pay two of his friends to steal a getaway car and actually take the paintings from the museum in broad daylight. To give them some money upfront, James asks for a loan from his mother (played by Hope Davis), lying that he, an otherwise unemployed carpenter, needs some cash to get supplies for a potential job. One wonders if the guy can lie so easily because his deceptions have a bit of truth behind them.

Things go wrong at pretty much every step. One of the friends drops out right before the robbery, and James just decides to fill the pal's role with someone he doesn't know. That guy brings a pistol with him and is a bit too eager to show it. News of the robbery is everywhere, even being noticed by James' father (played by Bill Camp), a judge who jokes that he can't imagine anyone wanting to pay money for abstract art. It seems as if James didn't expect any of this, and doesn't that say it all about the man's potentially misplaced self-assuredness and ignorance when it comes to, you know, actually being a criminal?

One could look at this as a morality play of sorts, since James is something of an Everyman (or, at least, the suburban middle-class variety of one), who is tempted by greed and pays for it in ways that he certainly hasn't considered. Reichardt is too smart and subtle a filmmaker to lay on this idea too thickly, though.

Instead, she simply observes as James gradually loses everything, tries to keep the diminishing number of things he believes he has left, and finds his relatively comfortable life transformed into one in which he has to devise more and more plans on the fly, just to keep the only thing that starts to matter—his freedom. At a certain point in this story, it would be easy to argue that James lost that as soon as the robbery happened. He just didn't know it.

What's most fascinating, perhaps, is how Reichardt, who establishes a decent amount of suspense during the planning phase and execution of the robbery (driven in no small part by Rob Mazurek's jazz score), intentionally undercuts the tension shortly after that sequence. James is on the run, but it often doesn't feel that way, as he travels on a couple buses, spends some time on the farm of a married pair of friends (played by John Magaro and Gaby Hoffmann), and basically has a getaway plan conveniently laid out for him at one point.

It all seems almost too easy, and doesn't that bring us right back to what landed James in this situation in the first place? The Mastermind is also unassuming in just how clever Reichardt's sense of irony, especially the film's final punch line, is.

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