The Mastermind Review: BFI London Film Festival 2025

Josh O’Connor thinks he’s planned the perfect crime in The Mastermind

J.B (Josh O’Connor) is an unemployed carpenter in early 1970s New England. His parents are respectable people, and while his father, a judge, tries to put him in touch with possible employers but J.B abuses his mother’s generosity rather than actually getting a job of his own. When his wife (Alana Haim) asks him to take care of their two boys while she is out at work, he claims he can’t because of errands he has to run. Those errands? Planning and executing an art heist.

J.B has planned the theft of four high-value paintings from a local gallery, and with the help of two recruits, he pulls the job off, though not without a few hitches along the way. While stealing the art may have been relatively easy, J.B quickly finds that getting away with it is significantly harder, and almost immediately he is in a whole heap of trouble.

The Mastermind is the latest from American auteur Kelly Reichardt, following on from her celebrated works First Cow and Showing Up; she again both writes and directs. Shot on sepia-toned grainy film and set against a twangy jazz score, she perfectly recreates the 1970s setting – not just in look but in spirit, as we wander through this unassuming, drab town where clearly nothing of note ever really happens. The Vietnam War and its associated protests are constantly rumbling on in the background of many scenes, grounding us in a turbulent point of history, even if our main characters are oblivious to its significance.

Reichardt’s films are often characterised by their unhurried pace, but with The Mastermind, that pace becomes near glacial. After the engaging opening half hour of the heist itself, we move into an excruciatingly slow 20 minutes or so where J.B must now deal with the immediate aftermath – one scene of him hiding the stolen paintings feels like it will stretch on for all eternity. Subverting all tropes that a heist movie should be exciting, frenetic or glamorous, it almost feels like Reichardt is mocking her audience for expecting such a thing from her.

J.B is not a very good art thief. He’s also not a very good husband, father or indeed a human being. As The Mastermind stretches on, it becomes eminently clear that while he may have had the arrogance to believe he could live a different sort of life to the mundane middle-class one he had, he does not have the foresight or the spine to do so. Frustratingly thoughtless as a character, it will ultimately be his inability to engage with what is going on in the world around him that will be his downfall, as The Mastermind draws to a close with a scene of delicious irony.

This is the third film in only a week I am seeing Josh O’Connor star in, joining the latest Knives Out movie and romantic drama The History of Sound to make a hell of a year for a talented actor who seems to finally be breaking through to Hollywood after a decade in indies and supporting roles. He is superbly opaque here, crafting a character that is too innocuous to really hate, even as he continually makes mistakes that are going to hurt the people who have supported him.

Droll rather than laugh out loud funny, The Mastermind is not without a sense of humour but feels vastly overlong for a film in which surprisingly little really happens. A complete subversion of everything you’d expect from a heist movie, it is nevertheless a brilliant observation of time and place from Kelly Reichardt – though it lacks her previous richness for characters.

The Mastermind is playing as part of the BFI London Film Festival. It will be released in UK cinemas on 24th October 2025

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