Review: Reichardt takes on the heist movie in "The Mastermind"
Friday, October 17, 2025 at 9:30PM 
Many of contemporary cinema's most celebrated auteurs have recently chosen to exercise their comedic muscles. Park Chan-wook leans on farcicalness and cartoon-like mugging as he's never done before in No Other Choice, while even something as palpably angry as Jafar Panahi's It Was Just An Accident often moves in the way of screwball escalation. One Battle After Another is as harrowing as it is hilarious, and the same could be said of The Secret Agent. Down in the arthouse weeds, we can find Guiraudie and Kurosawa probing the limits of absurdity. Marco Berger lovingly contemplates the romcom while, in the mainstream, Celine Song tries to subvert it. Pálmason is off in his own world, somehow turning child maiming into comedy gold in The Love That Remains.
Which leads us to The Mastermind, Kelly Reichardt's take on a heist movie, starring the ever-fumbling and disheveled Josh O'Connor performing another rendition of the pathetic loser blues he's been perfecting for the best part of the last decade. Hardly a laugh riot in the traditional sense, I'd still call it one of 2025's funniest flicks…
It's difficult to decide between two possibilities when picking what's the best and most ironic joke in Reichardt's latest. Is it The Mastermind's very title? After all, that's the last word one would use to describe JB Mooney, an art school dropout and dispirited family man who can't quite fit into the suburbanite life of 1972 Massachusetts. He's had everything handed to him, whether from Lady Luck or his wealthy parents, who still regularly bail out their prodigal son. Yet, nothing seems to satisfy JB, a fellow whose self-regard is only matched by self-delusion. Lost in the sauce of unearned arrogance, the man starts stealing from local museums, even involving his kids and wife in the action. A family that steals together stays together? Doubtful.
In any case, he's no mastermind. Indeed, the singular moment of thievery that Reichardt's camera perceives working within reason is that of a trinket, with JB's boys running cover by being loud youths disturbing the museum's peace and its security personnel. The minute he tries something bigger, it all goes wrong. Most perplexingly, shit hits the fan immediately, yet this art thief feels secure enough in his schemes to go back home, expecting no repercussions. When the police come a-knocking, it's time to improvise an escape that, like every single one of JB's plans, goes pear-shaped almost from the start. I won't spoil the ending, but nobody can expect this nincompoop to walk away scot-free, even if what happens can hardly be described as justice.
The only successful heist going on is Reichardt's, who, just this week, ran off with many an unsuspecting moviegoer's time as The Mastermind was AMC theaters' choice for their monthly unseen screenings. Just imagining someone who has no past experience with the director or any interest in it being confronted with The Mastermind is so preposterous as to induce giggles. Because, no matter how much fun Reichardt's having with JB's inadequacies, the humor is primarily reliant on formalist devices and a good slathering of irony. Moreover, the glacial rhythms that characterize her oeuvre are as present as ever, inaction always given precedence over more generally accepted concepts of narrative momentum.
But I mentioned two jokes up top, and the disconnect between a film's title and its story is just one. The other is Rob Mazurek's score, how Reichardt deploys it in her usual multi-hyphenated duties as director and editor. From the top, The Mastermind sounds like the coolest heist movie you ever did hear, jazzy and insouciant, so suave as to be obscene. Yet, what the soundtrack's telling isn't the same tale that the image's putting across, with the retro beats often surging as punctuation to utter inanities or exulting failure as if it were a glorious triumph. The musical signals excitement in an old-fashioned heist movie way, but Reichardt is profoundly uninterested in the thrills of the genre.
She outright contradicts them with an impishness that's reminiscent of a kid who got away with taking one too many cookies from the jar. Or, if you permit me another belabored analogy, the attitude of someone who regards the subgenre as a beautiful painting and then pours paint stripper over the canvas. At times, these musical contradictions can feel like an insight into how the characters, especially JB, think of their own hijinks. In other instances, the effect is so deadpan sardonic that you can't really glom it onto the characterizations and are left with the notion that the film is having a laugh at itself. And, of course, it's not just the score that plays into this, though it is the main culprit.
Consider the use of wide shots as punchline rather than the expected appeal to closeups and actors' reactions. There's something rather Tatiesque about it, as when The Mastermind lingers on JB circling the block in a getaway car. The scene is built chiefly out of mediums looking into the vehicle, lulling you into believing JB's purpose as much as he does before it cuts to a wide. Then, all imagined grandeur withers away and dies in the face of his ugly old machine moving with not an ounce of casualness in sight, deception failed to a clownish degree. The absurdity of his actions hits like a slap thanks to the unbeatable comedic power of distance.
In the same heist sequence, Reichardt reminds us how there's nothing funnier than a couple of idiots fumbling their way through a static wide shot. No other composition can compare for stillness versus clumsy nonsense is always a winning combo. For sure, The Mastermind is full of aborted gestures and disharmonious actor business. Think of car keys dropped in the middle of a secretive night shot, fabric running crooked through a sewing machine, messy laces that need re-tying during an escape lest the robber trip on his own shoes. One could spend pages mulling over Reichardt's approach to comedy. I certainly want to wax rhapsodic about the grunts of an out-of-shape fellow faffing around a barn, or a pig's discontent when witnessing a movie star pratfall.
Nevertheless, there's more to The Mastermind than its funny bone. For example, Reichardt stages the collapse of a marriage with exquisite restraint and dramatic economy, having Alana Haim wordlessly disconnect from the domestic scene while O'Connor flits about in his own anxious pocket dimension. You understand years of a failed matrimony in an instant. And despite all that, Reichardt still regards her leading man as a desiring image befitting genre conventions. A later scene of lonesome JB is framed around two backlit shirts evoking a painterly sensuousness and a mirror to show the actor clad in nothing but boxer shorts, absolute cinema in so many words.
Speaking of O'Connor, it's difficult to imagine the project working without him at the center, even though the supporting cast is none too shabby. An early lunch with his on-screen mother finds the British up-and-comer acting like a boy whose lies are so evident as to endear him to whoever is at the other end. Certainly, the camera sees right through him and O'Connor is in on it, even though JB never is. Much further into the story, even when the charlatan is trying his hardest to be sincere, the performance has a ring of falsity that, by that point has lost the charm it possessed. The Mastermind is, at once, willing to be enthralled by its protagonist and perfectly lucid about what kind of man would behave as he does.
Perhaps more importantly, the film is aware of how emblematic he was of a time and place that bridged between the 1960s counter-culture and the rise of American neo-liberalism that followed. Everybody and their mother has been doing 1970s pastiche lately, but Kelly Reichardt is one of the few who seems to have actually captured the ethos of the time, mayhap even the filmmaking attitudes that defined the decade, without ever feeling derivative of them. There's much New Hollywood here, a whole lot of Akerman, French influence for sure, but it's still uniquely Reichardt. No matter how exquisite Christopher Blauvelt's hazy lensing might be, how authentic the sets and costumes are, nothing would hit as hard without that ineffable quality at play.
The whole thing comes together for that aforementioned ending, another irony to send the audience home unsure if they should laugh again or hurl or revolt or despair about the echoes of the past resounding through the present. If much of The Mastermind feels like watching Reichardt explore how many variations she can find within a deliberately limited set of notes, the coda breaks away to suggest something more akin to a sotto voce scream. Take this fanboy's opinion with a grain of salt, but I'd slot it right next to the conclusion of First Cow as another perfect finish in the director's canon, not quite a denouement and as far from catharsis as you can get.
After its world premiere at Cannes and a sojourn through the festival circuit that included the NYFF, The Mastermind is finally in theaters, courtesy of MUBI.
Reader Comments (8)
No posts, not even a post with a quote from one of Diane Keaton's films after her death, is SO disapointing in a so called actressexual site. Claudio, you broke my heart.
Jorge Cesar -- I do not own this website, nor do I alone define what is posted in it. Apart from the specific films covered in reviews and festival coverages, my posts are first pitched to Nathaniel, and he gives me the go-ahead or not. Moreover, there are other writers besides me at TFE.
But, most importantly, I have the responsibility to write these reviews and fest coverage since press credentials, screeners and other sorts of access are contingent on coverage. Moreover, I am also writing for a Portuguese website and, since returning from Toronto, there hasn't been a week without some festival happening in Lisbon, which I am bound and accredited to cover. Queer Lisboa started four days after I returned from TIFF with tonsillitis, then a French Film Festival, and now DocLisboa. I don't want to be ungrateful for these opportunities or for my job with the Portuguese site Magazine HD, but it means I don't have as much time as I'd like to work on other things besides reviews.
All this being said, I do love Diane Keaton, and have posted about her heartbreaking passing on social media, just not here. And I want to write something about her for TFE, something that does her justice. Right now, I'm trying to watch some of the blind spots in her filmography. So far I've seen and taken notes on:
PLAY IT AGAIN SAM
LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR
MRS. SOFFEL
THE FAMILY STONE
I still want to check SLEEPER, her most acclaimed TV movie performances, and Keaton's directorial work before committing to writing anything about her. Because, ideally, it'd be something that does justice to her range and fascinating career. Perhaps a personal top ten with information on how and where to watch her movies. I'll talk with Nathaniel about it when I have time and feel like I have done enough prep work to write it down without feeling like I'm shortchanging a cinematic legend we just lost and who I foolishly believed would still be with us for many years to come.
In the meantime, I'm sorry, but you'll get more reviews. Right now, I'm working on URCHIN, IS THIS THING ON?, some more NYFF and TIFF titles, including the Radu Jude double feature. I am sorry that it disappoints you and breaks your heart. I really am, and hope you can understand.
It's very good but I can't believe it's the second film this year to waste Alana Haim! And did this film really need to throw the one black character under the bus???
You can literally post a beautiful photo of Diane Keaton with (1946-2025) and the loyal community of commenters who enjoy participating in this site (who aren’t here for the dregs of festival coverage) will take it from there. Many of us have been appreciating Diane Keaton on TFE for 20+ years.
Was just about to post what DK did. Literally a pic of Diane Keaton from Manhattan and the commetariat would take it from there.
I love your writing Claudio, and I know Nathaniel has personal and work commitments that prevent the kind of updates of decades (!) past, but we miss the Oscar updates, the RIP posts, the general film appreciation. A few reviews a week from festivals of movies that aren't opening here for weeks or months (although not in this particular case) just isn't the same :(
Wae Mest -- I get your point about the racial dynamics at play, but that seemed like a deliberate choice to further undercut the white protagonist and the socio-political environment where the film is set. Robert Daniels wrote a great piece recently that touches on some of it. It's "How the White Savior Became This Year's Cinematic Punchline" for TIME.
Jorge Cesar, DK & Paranoid Android -- I have posted something about Diane Keaton. Hope it's enough for you, since, to be perfectly honest, I have little interest in writing the more in-depth piece I was thinking about by this point. At least here. While I know your outrage comes from a place of cinephile's grief, you can't begin to imagine how demotivating it is to read. But again, hope the recent post suffices, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe someone else will write about Keaton.
I'll watch it as i've seen everything she has done but I think Josh is in danger of becoming what Fassbender became about 10 years ago.
The way you talk about how Kelly Reichardt uses the crime almost as a doorway into character study—rather than the adrenaline of the robbery itself—really resonated with me. I especially appreciated your line about vulnerability taking centre stage over swagger. One thought: did you feel that the ’70s setting (with its social unease in the background) heightened the protagonist’s sense of being lost, or would the story have hit just as hard in a different era? Great job overall — made me want to rewatch it and catch the subtle bits you flagged.