Josh O’Connor’s performance in The Mastermind might not get as much attention as others in his breakout run (like, say, Challengers or the upcoming Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery), but that’s partly because he’s playing someone who doesn’t want a lot of attention.
His J.B. Mooney is unassertive partly by nature–almost maddeningly passive with his wife (Alana Haim) and two young sons (brothers Carl and Tommy Mooney). He’s also, however, consumed with a furtive plan: to steal four Arthur Dove paintings from a local museum during the middle of the day. (Written and directed by Kelly Reichardt, The Mastermind is loosely based on a 1972 robbery at the Worcester Art Museum).
O’Connor nevertheless offers a riveting portrait of unraveling self-delusion. On the day of the heist, his plan almost immediately runs into snags: he’s forgotten there is no school that day, so he must find a place to put his boys; the getaway driver bails on him at the last minute; and while parked outside the museum as his two accomplices are inside, a cop pulls up next to him for his lunch break. They still barely manage to pull it off. But after a brief period of elation—a former art student, J.B. allows himself a moment where he hangs one of the paintings above his couch—the walls start closing in.
O’Connor balances an outer reticence with an inner confidence throughout, then slyly brings the two qualities together as the film proceeds (notice how he fiddles with his wedding ring while otherwise effortlessly lying to a pair of detectives). J.B. isn’t an antihero, exactly, but something more fitting for a Kelly Reichardt film. If most of her movies poke at the American project—whether that be manifest destiny in the likes of Meek’s Cutoff and First Cow or capitalism in Wendy and Lucy and Night Moves—J.B. registers as a particularly American fraud. It’s notable that protests against the Vietnam War swirl about him in the background of the film (on television sets, on the radio, in the streets). Like that doomed debacle—a projection of American dominance that utterly failed, both the Vietnamese and those sent to fight there—J.B. remains seemingly oblivious to his own failings and missteps, even when he’s forced to go on the lonely run.
The fact that we, in the audience, are not oblivious owes much to Rob Mazurek’s audacious score. We first hear it in the opening scene—a jazzy, Ocean’s Eleven-style riff that accompanies J.B.’s “practice” theft of a figurine at the museum. That fizziness quickly fades, however. As J.B. drives to the museum on the day of the heist—and all during the theft—the score strips down to consist only of percussion: antsy, poking snaps and snares that occasionally reappear later in the film to accentuate moments of anxiousness and desperation. It’s what’s happening in J.B.’s head, even if he can’t fully hear it.
(11/14/2025)
