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In The Mastermind, an Art Heist’s Aftermath Unfolds Against the Backdrop of Vietnam War-Era America
- The Mastermind, directed by Kelly Reichardt, premiered on May 23, 2025, at the Cannes Film Festival and depicts a 1970s Massachusetts art heist.
- The film is inspired by a real 1972 Worcester Art Museum robbery and follows James Mooney, a struggling carpenter who plans a flawed theft of four Arthur Dove paintings.
- The movie combines a scruffy 1970s visual style, jazz percussion score by Rob Mazurek, and background Vietnam War context to create a subdued, human-focused anti-heist narrative.
- Josh O'Connor embodies Mooney with a blend of quiet melancholy and comic timing while critics have praised Reichardt’s subversion of genre clichés and accessible character study.
- The film’s outcome illustrates the protagonist’s personal failings amid social unrest, suggesting how middle-class struggles can drive unwise decisions, making the story quietly gripping and never dull.
13 Articles
13 Articles
The Mastermind: Kelly Reichardt, Josh O'Connor and the Most Deplorable and Charming Theft of the Century (****)
Since cinema is cinema, few arts can boast of having stolen so much. The invention of the Lumières stole from the theater, from photography, from the nineteenth novel, from the...
Cannes 2025 : in "The Mastermind", Kelly Reichardt Revisits the Robbery Film, without Noise or Siren
In the troubled US of the 1970s, the American director focuses on the consequences of a theft of paintings, committed by an unemployed father incarnated by Josh O的Connor.
‘The Mastermind’ is Kelly Reichardt’s Most Enjoyable Film [Cannes] — World of Reel
UPDATE: Reviews are positive via Variety, Vulture, Screen, The Guardian, Deadline, and THR Kelly Reichardt deconstructs the heist genre in “The Mastermind” — gently stripping away its polish to reveal something more human underneath. In this anti-heist film, Reichardt does what she does best: subverting cliches.“The Mastermind” is also Reichardt’s most entertaining film due to its subversively comic nature, and its also a compelling character st…
Josh O'Connor In Kelly Reichardt Heist Movie
Depart it to Kelly Reichardt to make a ‘70s film that appears and looks like a misplaced ‘70s film, from its scruffy visible aesthetic to its muted colours, its affected person character commentary and unhurried pacing to its unstinting funding in an underdog protagonist whose cautious planning ends in a coup that quickly goes south. Josh O’Connor’s rumpled enchantment makes him a really perfect match for the title position in The Mastermind, a …
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