‘The Mastermind’ review: Kelly Reichardt’s sombre slice of 1970s Americana stars Josh O’Connor

Dir/scr: Kelly Reichardt US. 2025. 110mins

Kelly Reichardt often tackles genres from oblique angles, subverting their most recognisable tropes to make something personal and deeply felt. Such is the case with The Mastermind, ostensibly a heist film that dispenses with the criminal activity early on so that the writer/director/editor can instead tell an elegiac story about an ordinary screw-up. Josh O’Connor is marvelous as this sputtering soul with no aptitude for illegality — or, frankly, anything else — as he drifts through an unremarkable life that’s slowly slipping through his fingers.

Connects to something larger about an America losing its way

This is Reichardt’s second straight picture to premiere in Cannes Competition following 2022’s Showing Up. O’Connor’s moving turn will attract the most attention, and fans of the idiosyncratic filmmaker will surely also be intrigued, although larger crossover commercial success may be unlikely for this gently melancholic work.

In 1970, out-of-work carpenter J.B. (O’Connor) lives with his wife Terri (Alana Haim) and their two young sons (fraternal twins Sterling and Jasper Thompson) in Massachusetts. As the picture begins, we see J.B. carefully casing a local art museum, which he plans to rob with some associates. (Rob Mazurek’s jazzy, percussive score prepares us for the big heist.) But although J.B. walks away with four Arthur Dove paintings, his plan backfires and he is forced to go on the run.

Not only is The Mastermind set in 1970, but the film very much feels like a product of that era, reflecting the unconventional narratives of New Hollywood that were populated by offbeat antiheroes. It becomes a running joke in Reichardt’s screenplay that others point out J.B’s lack of planning, and we quickly discover that the character’s defining characteristic is how ill-prepared he is for much of life. Even before this bungled heist, he has long been a failure — especially in the eyes of his respected father (Bill Camp), a local judge — and his quirky, accidental odyssey will not inspire him to reach greater heights within himself.

Reichardt’s last pseudo-heist, 2013’s eco-thriller Night Moves, also concentrated much of its runtime on the crime’s after-effects, but here the suspense is far more existential. The Mastermind is hardly plotty, and yet the episodic misadventures that befall J.B. as he improvises his escape are so well-observed that it’s best to know as little as possible going in.

Suffice it to say that, with great subtlety, Reichardt weaves in societal elements of the time — specifically, news about the disastrous ongoing Vietnam War — so that J.B.’s meagre journey connects to something larger about an America losing its way. Cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt captures fading suburbias, beat-up buses and cloudy skies, all of which guarantee this period drama betrays not an ounce of nostalgia. In fact, one could argue that The Mastermind is quite timely, also speaking to America’s current political turmoil.

There are lovely low-key performances from Haim, Camp and John Magaro as J.B.’s old friend, but the picture belongs to O’Connor, whose silences convey all of J.B.’s unexpressed disappointments. Because the character is so stoic — so desperate to appear as if he has everything under control — it takes a few reels to recognise just how lost he is. O’Connor plays him like the quintessential American dreamer, except without the skills or fortitude to make those dreams reality. Tellingly, Mazurek’s score grows more sombre as J.B.’s prospects become dimmer.

Once the heist implodes, in shocking and sometimes surprisingly funny ways, J.B. is mostly alone on screen, which gives O’Connor the space to articulate the enormity of the man’s despair and inadequacy. Some may not know whether to laugh or cry at J.B.’s predicament, which he has brought upon himself, and Reichardt never tips her hand regarding her own feelings on the matter. Even the abrupt, cosmically ironic final scene leaves room for interpretation about where J.B. goes from here.