Critics reviews

Just because more “happens” in The Mastermind than a typical Reichardt film doesn’t mean it’s a departure for the director. She maintains her fascinatingly methodical filmmaking style, with lengthy takes and a camera that either stands stock-still or pans ever-so-slowly as it observes the rhythms of common, everyday life.

Outwardly, the tale of a robbery and the aftermath, it is definitely not a heist movie, certainly not one involving clever, intricate planning – the title is meant sarcastically. The real subject is the character planning the crime, and the uncomfortable, life-changing pilgrimage he experiences as a result.

Working with a deliberate approach all her own, [Reichardt] here takes the classic heist story, gives it a few tugs and shrugs, and winds up with a funny, sad movie that gets stronger and more original as it goes along.

This is O’Connor at his finest yet, and The Mastermind is the slinkiest, most satisfying piece of “mood cinema” you’re likely to have seen for a long while.

Hazily shot on film by Christopher Blauvelt, no visual detail is out of place... The Mastermind is a slow-burning thriller, directed with a thief’s precision by Reichardt and anchored by an excellent performance by O’Connor.

The beauty of the film is the simplicity of its means. Reichardt has drawn a deceptively unshowy performance from O’Connor, who has perfected the amiable accent and mien of the educated American middle class... He is no master, let alone a mastermind.

As ever with this filmmaker, the action plays out at a leisurely pace, nudged gently along by the most internal of performances... This is a cinema of introversion, concealment and evasion. Nothing is given up easily... [The Mastermind is] a film that grows on you.

This is a character study of an unexceptional man, who believes he is special, as he is slowly and inexorably forced to contemplate his own mediocrity. Always a physically expressive actor, O’Connor is phenomenal here... This is magnetic, compulsively watchable work from [the actor], who is shaping up to be one of the finest of his generation.

Quietly superb... The Mastermind is a heist movie with a melancholic difference: it’s less about the steal itself than the inevitably anticlimactic nature of what follows.

Reichardt, with her regular cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, has a wonderful way of staging scenes that feel sparse and warm at the very same time.

Reichardt builds her story and the way her protagonist pinballs through his, yields a remarkably precise exploration of hubris as a self-destructive force. The Mastermind isn’t a heist movie so much as a character study that dismantles the criminal himself, one selfish act at a time.

She retains her genius for slowly but surely shifting a film’s course until it’s become something else again, subtly leaving us space to reevaluate what we might have thought of JB and his maverick path. It’s not unlike her eco-terrorism drama Night Moves (2013) in this movement, but definitely more successful.