Her best and best -known film, “Wendy and Lucy” (2008), shows Michelle Williams for 80 minutes on the desperate search for her descending dog in the southwest of the USA. Of course, it made a look at when it became known in the run-up to the Cannes Festival that the new work of Kelly Reichhardt should be a Heist film of all things. But puff cake! The “Certain Women” director provides-despite the title “The mastermind” – of course not suddenly an” Ocean's 14 “. Instead, her film turns out to be an equally tender and merciless exposure of one of the primeval canvas myths: namely the stringing genius, which is always one step ahead of its opponents.
The general cult of genius has been increasingly under fire for several years. But now he is also in the cinema on his collar: from Steve McQueen in “Thomas Crown cannot be grasped” to George Clooney in the “Ocean's” trilogy there are countless master planners who always take into account when they are elaborate. James Blaine Mooney (Josh O'Connor), the title character from “The Mastermind”, also thinks as the security guards of the local museum in the small town of Framingham, which is about 30 kilometers west of Boston. But this is probably the main thing that nobody expects someone to steal the pictures. In any case, one of the two security guards sleeps on his chair in the corner all day long.
James Blaine Mooney (Josh O'Connor) is the title -giving mastermind – but soon there is doubt as to whether the father of the family is actually such a master planner.
The old couple, who comes into the hall during the theft of the four impressionist paintings, also naturally considers the two men with tights over their heads to be a museum employee. Probably the Heist would have worked more smoothly if you had just gone into it – without a plan – and marched out with the works of art. But James, the son of a judge and even unsuccessful carpenter, are probably not primarily concerned. Instead, thrill plays a certain role: in 1970 the student protests romp all over the country, only in Framingham there is nothing going on. Or the father of two sons even deliberately concerns the destruction of his own existence, even if there is no obvious reason for it, after all, James seems happily to be married to his wife Terri (Alana Haim).
While his accomplices are grossly dealing with the prey, every move by James looks careful and controlled – and yet it takes forever until he has ruined the box on the hayloft, whereupon he also accidentally flows the ladder with his feet. Under a mastermind you would actually imagine something else. And yet the rules of the genre have been instituted as an audience over the decades that, contrary to all evidence, we continue to wait for the great resolution that all the setbacks were naturally calculated. After all, James seems to be so tremendous for his cause that he even brings his sons to the Heist meeting point when he states when delivering to the school that it remains closed today.
Terri (Alana Haim) is not in the mood for the “romantic” life of a gangster bride, but closes a pragmatic line.
Masterminds are usually also women's heroes – and that Josh O'Connor is one of the hottest actors in his generation would have seriously denied no one since “Challengers – Rivals”. Nevertheless, it is the women who first see through the title “hero”: When he is going to escape with his old school friend Fred (John Magaro), he literally admires that James has brought it to the front pages of the newspapers, even when it comes to looking for art theft. Fred's wife Maude (Gaby Hoffmann), on the other hand, does not make any illusions at all and just throw the house guest out at some point. Even his own wife only bangs the listener when James explains that he would have done all of this for three quarters for her and the children.
Nevertheless, all of this does not seem parodistically or even maliciously, which would not have fit one of the greatest humanists in the contemporary cinema. Kelly Reichardt does not collapse the figure of the mastermind and then look down on it from above. Instead, she puts her up together, afterwards, to meet her full of empathy, but without misunderstood pity at eye level, as she did with so many other lost souls in her career.
Conclusion: Anyone who knows Kelly Reichardt's films knows how sensitive and compassionate their films – often by social outsiders – are films. Now the indie icon uses all of her tenderness and empathy to inappropriate one of the most durable cinema in the ground. We are excited to see whether Thomas Crown, Danny Ocean & Co. will still see the same eyes after the more tragic than weird “The Mastermind”.
We saw “The Mastermind” at the Cannes Film Festival 2025, where he celebrated its world premiere as part of the official competition.