REVIEW: The Mastermind [2025]

Rating: R | Runtime: 110 minutes
Release Date: October 17th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: MUBI
Director(s): Kelly Reichardt
Writer(s): Kelly Reichardt

That’s outside my realm of expertise.

It’s a case of opportunity. If the Framingham Museum of Art’s lone guard on the second floor is always sleeping, why not see what you can get away with? JB Mooney (Josh O’Connor) has a lot of time on his hands since carpentry work in his Massachusetts town has dried up and he has no ambition to become a foreman. That coupled with his well-to-do parents’ (Hope Davis’ Sarah and Bill Camp’s Judge Bill) membership means he can case the space daily, enlist his sons to cause a commotion and test the guard’s slumber, and even steal a figurine.

Writer/director Kelly Reichardt ensures we know such an operation is just a game at the start of The Mastermind. We see it through JB’s surprise that he actually got away with taking the miniature and his father overtly calling him out for not applying himself to a career. We’re therefore dealing with an amateur. A former art student of privilege who recognizes a couple paintings in the museum from his studies and has an epiphany to flip them for a substantial pile of cash against the backdrop of 1970s Vietnam-era America. His eyes are way too big.

Imagining the perfect heist is different than completing it. You must be able to trust your accomplices (which he surely cannot), understand your exit strategy (and hope it’s better than the one Gaby Hoffmann’s Maude guesses), and be able to read a calendar. Because things can only go downhill after discovering he didn’t know his kids had off from school the day of the crime. That’s a simple problem to be fixed by a sitter or couple bucks at the bowling alley. Losing your driver and allowing a gun to enter the equation are much more complicated.

As such, Reichardt writes the theft as a humorous series of missteps and inconveniences. O’Connor nails the hangdog expression of finding himself thrust into taking a hands-on approach to what he believed would be very hands-off. Each new wrinkle sends him into an exasperated spiral that should make him walk away to live and fight another day. His JB is so laser-focused and determined not to squander his not-so-foolproof-plan, that he leans in further instead. And he assumes paying everyone a few bucks will mitigate future risk.

Well, since the post-heist events are even more absurd, JB learns quickly that it wasn’t a solid bet to take. Because each slip not only puts the police on his tail, but also other criminals who recognize this easy mark that’s way out of his depth by reading the papers. I was having so much fun that I couldn’t wait for what came next to ruin his life more … until I realized nothing else might be coming after all. The third act is where Reichardt’s trademarked pacing enters the fray to replace entertainment with inevitability.

The Mastermind doesn’t fall apart, though. Watching JB traverse his impossible situation by hitting up friends for help (the aforementioned Maude and her husband Fred, played by John Magaro), leaving his wife (Alana Haim’s Terri) behind, and turning to petty thievery in hopes of outrunning his felony charge is still a worthwhile endeavor. It just loses the electricity of those first two-thirds that chugged along to Rob Mazurek’s score. It’s so night and day that I don’t recall there being any music at all once JB becomes a fugitive.

Thankfully, Reichardt still delivers a fantastic parting shot once karma closes the gap on her antihero protagonist. It’s a perfectly orchestrate final sequence that plays similarly to the two heists from the beginning—checkpoint to checkpoint with a couple surprises to flip expectations on their head. So, despite the lull, I did ultimately leave with as big a smile as the one I had at the start due to this reprise. It helps that O’Connor never forgets to play JB as an everyman punching above his weight class too. He can’t know what he doesn’t know.

The whole cast is great from Camp’s entitlement to Davis’ charity or Hoffman’s pragmatism to Magaro’s idealism or Eli Gelb’s paranoia to Javion Allen’s recklessness. JB is the calm straight man in a world of colorful characters who inevitably tries to be what he isn’t. There’s no better example of this fact than to see O’Connor’s silent surrender while Matthew Maher laughs in his face for having screwed it all up. It just goes to show that nepotistic comfort can cause the most boring and directionless amongst to fall victim to hubris.