In 1970, Mooney and two cohorts wander into a museum in broad daylight and steal four paintings. When holding onto the art proves more difficult than stealing them, Mooney is relegated to a life on the run.
EN
“Heist movies run on the mechanics of escape and the thrill of getting away with it, but Kelly Reichardt’s latest detoured story brilliantly turns the genre on its head. In her 1970s-set film The Mastermind, the fallout from the mediocre robbery of a minor-league museum leads to a steadily deepening character study that ruminates on what’s really at stake, and who exactly we’re rooting for.”
Nicolas Rapold1
“Kelly Reichardt’s last film, as it happens, was also about art: Showing Up, with Michelle Williams as a stressed artist whose day-to-day existence (the banal business of “showing up”) is shown to be more real than the supposed white heat of artistic inspiration. There the quotidian details were as relevant as the art; in The Mastermind, the dreary details of post-heist calamity are as pertinent as the main event. It is this that attracts Reichardt’s observing eye and makes The Mastermind so quietly gripping.”
Peter Bradshaw2
