Acclaimed director Kelly Reichardt, best known for placid character dramas, veers into genre work with the moody heist film The Mastermind . Reichardt’s first solo screenplay, The Mastermind manages to be both a family drama—quiet and searching like her films First Cow (2019) and Certain Women (2016)—and a methodical crime movie in the vein of Rififi (1955) and Le Samouraï (1967).

Set in the 1970s, The Mastermind follows J.B. Mooney (played rumpled and dreamy by Josh O’Connor), an unemployed carpenter and family man in Framingham, Massachusetts, who attempts to steal four abstract paintings by Arthur Dove. The film is built around Mooney’s process, closely tracking his careful planning of the crime and its aftermath. As his wife, Teri (Alana Haim), says little but constantly

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