Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” stars Josh O’Connor as James Mooney, a thief who steals works of art right out of museums.
Sarah, James’ mother (the always wonderful Hope Davis), questions his life choices and interrogates him over his recent actions. While James understands that what he’s doing is wrong, he has no intention of stopping.
Released in theaters last fall and now on the Mubi channel, “The Mastermind” represents my latest failure to get into Reichardt’s films. She’s an acclaimed director whose movies have yet to connect with me.
Her latest isn’t a slow burn; it’s just slow. It’s deja vu all over again, as it’s another year, another opportunity for me to give a new Reichardt movie two stars and dismiss it for being a mildly interesting slog.
I’d like to get past this and finally love something she’s made, but, once again, she’s made it impossible for me.
I still admire Reichardt’s ability to create a vivid environment and sustain a mood or scenario that pulls us in. What happens after that, in just about every single one of her films thus far? She loses me with her decision to let her story just float away like a discarded balloon.
It’s irritating because her movies have the potential to be so much more than just mood pieces and unfinished character studies.
Reichardt’s fanbase will completely disagree, but I can only muster up so much enthusiasm for this and “Meek’s Cutoff” (2010), “Showing Up” (2022) and most of her other works.
I’ll confess that I loved Reichardt’s “Wendy and Lucy” (2008), which reduced me to tears at the Denver Film Festival. It was also the last time I saw one of her movies and felt anything besides frustration and the faint feeling that I had been conned.
“Detective” (1985), one of my favorite films from New Wave Cinema auteur extraordinaire Jean-Luc Godard, is, like “The Mastermind,” also a deconstructed heist movie and even more minimalist than this one. Yet, “Detective” is so cool and devoted to breaking down expectations, it manages to captivate, even as it’s basically a movie about nothing.
Here, Reichardt’s recreation of the Vietnam War era and the 1970s in general is dazzling. O’Connor is an interesting actor in the lead (though he basically gives the same performance in the altogether better drama, “Rebuilding,” also from 2025).
O’Connor just scored a major role in Steven Spielberg’s big summer movie,“Disclosure Day” and I wish him well. “Licorice Pizza” stars Alana Haim is also in the cast, but Davis’ performance here is the film’s best, though she has a tendency to be the best thing about most movies in which she appears.
The jazz score is also excellent.
Aside from “Wendy and Lucy,” I liked “The Mastermind” more than most of Reichardt’s recent works, so maybe her art is growing on me. This is cinema, no doubt, but I need a story, too.
Two Stars (out of four)
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