“The Mastermind is one of Reichardt’s most enjoyable efforts due to a central character whose every bit of loss of humanity we feel in our bones.”

Kelly Reichardt’s cinema has always been small scale and humanist, so it should be no surprise that her latest, The Mastermind, about a bumbling art thief whose whole world comes crashing down when he tries to make his big score, is equally modest. It’s a crime thriller, ostensibly, but no shootouts or nail-biting suspense here, just a man who tries to look out for his family (or so he says) but ends up down on his luck and forced to become a true criminal. Featuring a nicely modulated ‘sad sack’ performance by rising star Josh O’Connor and an appropriately nervous jazzy score by Rob Mazurek, The Mastermind sees Reichardt at her most accessible, even if her audience will always remain somewhat niche.

When we meet James Blaine Mooney (O’Connor), visiting the Framingham art museum with his family of four, he immediately establishes himself as a bit of a thief, nicking a small figurine out of one of the exhibition cases. It’s not quite clear if his wife Terri (Alana Haim) is in on the thievery, and we never see the figurine again. James is an art school dropout and purports to be an architectural designer, but a lot of the time we see him loitering around in his boxers and socks as his wife leaves for work. The figurine is small fry though, as James has a much bigger heist in mind: to steal four paintings by Arthur Dove, an early American modernist. He enlists a couple of friends, laying out his plans for them in his basement as his wife goes off to bed, by now clearly unaware of her husband’s criminal activities.

When the day arrives, nothing of his masterplan is left standing: the kids have an unexpected day off from school, his getaway driver bails on him, and the loose cannon of the bunch pulls a gun on a teenager during the job. Nevertheless, they make it out with the paintings. Now what? The film never makes quite clear what the next step in James’ plan was, as he hides the loot in a pigsty out in the countryside. What is clear is that he is far from the mastermind that the title suggests. It doesn’t take long for the police to come knocking, and for some actual criminals to take the paintings from him. A wanted suspect, he leaves his family and goes on the run, briefly enjoying the hospitality of a friend (John Magaro), whose mundane life is lifted by the excitement of having a wanted criminal stay over. His wife (Gaby Hoffmann) is less enamoured by the idea, and quietly kicks James to the curb. Scraping his last dimes to find a roof over his head and something to eat, he makes a desperate but ultimately unsuccessful phone call to the home front to wire him some money. Desperate, he snatches an opportunity to find his way home, perhaps, but even this plan falls apart, just like his life.

It’s the early ’70s, and the film is set in the context of increasing protest against the Vietnam War. Reichardt sets this up nicely through the odd news report sprinkled into the background from time to time, but any deeper thematic message is absent; the protests are merely a plot device to further James’ demise. The Mastermind lacks depth in general, not just in its simple tale of an amateur crook in over his head, but also in the characterization of the supporting characters. Poor Haim gets so little screentime that she hardly even qualifies as the ‘suffering wife’ archetype. Magaro and particularly Hoffmann get their moments, with the latter’s performance perfectly holding the middle ground between pity and ‘get off my lawn’ modes. But the film belongs to O’Connor. James doesn’t start out as a bundle of excitement to begin with, and when everything around him starts to fall apart and he slowly enters into bum-hood, O’Connor’s naturally sad eyes lose all light as James curls up in a bundle both figuratively and literally.

Behind the camera, regular collaborator Christopher Blauvelt’s grainy cinematography captures the ’70s tone in browns and other earthy tones, gradually dialing down the saturation to mirror James’ downfall and the Massachusetts winter setting in. Rob Mazurek’s fretty trumpets and swishing brushes stroking the drums match the time period and build tension for the heist, but also are appropriately jittery as a reflection of the protagonist’s state of mind. From a technical perspective, this film is probably Reichardt’s most accomplished and ‘spectacular’ (if that could ever be said about her films) since Night Moves, with the parts coming together to evoke the mood of an era. Reichardt’s own direction is as always functional when it comes to the story’s beats, but brilliant when she has the humanity of her tale and her characters do the heavy lifting; O’Connor is a perfect match for this, with his hunched shoulders and his default timidity. He will never be an action star, but he will carve out a nice career in small dramas like this (he’s also the best thing in Oliver Hermanus’ otherwise dull The History of Sound). Slightly underwritten but consistently engaging, The Mastermind is one of Reichardt’s most enjoyable efforts due to a central character whose every bit of loss of humanity we feel in our bones; the flawless execution behind the camera is an added bonus.