Kelly Reichardt continues to be one of the most observant American filmmakers, and The Mastermind (2025) is a perfect fit for her patient, detail-driven gaze. Where Showing Up tracked an artist circling her own potential and Night Moves watched activists fumble toward consequence, this new film follows another of her quietly blinkered strivers. Josh O’Connor plays James Blaine “JB” Mooney, a small-town amateur who has mapped out an “easy” art-gallery heist, convinced meticulous lists can substitute for competence. He forgets the one variable he cannot control, the people he brings along, and the plan collapses in slow motion as his frequent gallery visits and affection for art make him an obvious suspect.
Reichardt sets The Mastermind in 1970s Massachusetts, then pares away the period trappings until time feels smudged. Apart from a few outfits and the boxy getaway cars, the movie could be happening inside a memory. That abstraction is where her genre play gets fun. Instead of ticking clocks and needle-drop bravado, the heist unfolds in held takes, offscreen sounds, and negative space. The theft is clumsy, the aftermath humiliating, and the suspense comes from watching JB improvise with the wrong tools while the world refuses to bend to his self-image.
O’Connor is perfectly cast. He has the blank, nervy poise that lets you project intelligence onto a character who is mostly running on misplaced confidence. Even when he says very little, there is a full interior life flickering behind the eyes, a mix of pride, panic, and the soft denial of a man who thinks he is the smartest in a very small room. Reichardt’s framing does the rest, catching the tiny fidgets that betray his control act and pinning him inside doorways and hallways like a specimen.
What keeps The Mastermind lively is Reichardt’s dry humor. She punctures JB’s grandiosity with bureaucratic hiccups, unglamorous spaces, and accomplices who are even less prepared than he is. The film is still recognizably hers, measured and humane, but there is a sly pleasure in how she tweaks the heist template without announcing the subversion.
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If it is not quite the summit of a career that includes Wendy and Lucy and First Cow, The Mastermind is another confident step, and a strong showcase for Josh O’Connor’s gift for making the smallest tremors read like earthquakes. It’s a minimalist caper that lingers, a study in how plans fall apart because people do.
Score: 8/10
The Mastermind (2025)
- Cast: Josh O’Connor, Alana Haim, Hope Davis, John Magaro, Gaby Hoffmann, Bill Camp, Amanda Plummer, Eli Gelb
- Director: Kelly Reichardt
- Genre: Crime, Drama
- Runtime: 110 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: October 24, 2025
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