The Current Cinema and soon streaming on MUBI - Unimpressed by THE MASTERMIND (Kelly Reichardt, USA, 2025

I guess it’s the disconnect…  “You will be the only person in Australia watching that film tonight” said the rueful cinema proprietor when I mentioned I planned to see Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind  that night. Not true. There were six others scattered round the Ritz’s luxurious basement room Cinema 9 at the 6.00 pm session. Still you wouldn’t need many fingers to count the national theatrical box office gross apparently.

Reichardt is a bit of a favourite. Gentle, thoughtful storytelling which on occasions, like Wendy and Lucy,  had me choking up. Certain Women  and Night Moves were among the best of the year. Reichardt did do a fine revisionist western, Meek's Cutoff so there was plenty to hope that The Mastermind  would be an artful attempt to take on a perennially popular genre, turn it on its head and make a movie that had people chortling at its riffs.  Its public trajectory is straight from the competition at Cannes, via the SFF and MIFF (where I’m guessing it cleaned up), a few days in cinemas before it goes to MUBI. That's becoming a well-worn path not just with MUBI but every streaming service trying to get some award kudos. (At least three of the trailers at the Ritz before the movie started had the Netflix logo.)

The Mastermind takes more than a while to give us the whole story of James, a dad looking after his kids, full of ambition, endlessly and secretly borrowing money from his mother and relying on his spouse to keep the family housed and fed via her job in an office. His father is a high-achieving local judge who is constantly on his case about getting real work. 

So for reasons not explained until late in the movie, James enlists the help of three acquaintances in a scheme to rob, in broad daylight, the local art museum of four paintings by a minor artist. (Minor to the extent that I doubt many in the audience will have heard of him.) We are a long way away from Rififi, Ocean’s Eleven, Touchez-pas au Grisbi or The Red Circle. It’s a  world surrounding an incompetent amateur. It has to be set in the 70s because otherwise with today’s CCTV, alarm systems, number plate and facial recognition, the thieves wouldn’t have made it out of the building let alone the neighbourhood.  So the title is ironic. Watching the movie a day or so after a gang, displaying nil levels of violence, certainly even less than on display in this movie, lifted 100million Euros worth of jewellery from the Louvre, a comparison was obvious.

But of course Reichardt isn’t interested in the mechanics of the heist movie. James is quickly identified and the second half of the movie has him on the run, using friends, abandoning his family and, at a somewhat glacial pace and without a plan, eventually trying to flee the country until…ironic ending…of course.

The 70s intrude via the ridiculous cars that Americans designed and drove at that time and the occasional intrusion of some black and white TV footage involving the Vietnam war, Nixon and others.

Does James,as parents used to say, wake up to himself…hard to say… does the movie seem to dabble in longueurs and fitful moments…you bet.

Still, having seen it I sat down and read six pages (six, count ‘em…not including the full page ad with quotes like “Dazzling. A new American gem enlivened by the spirit of 70s cinema” What are they talking about???). The enthusiasm and seriousness was palpable across an interview, a background piece and a full page review. There was also a short endorsement by the editor-in-chief himself. “This is Reichardt’s second look into the art world, following the largely (and criminally) ignored Showing Up (2022), and is up there with her own masterpieces.” 

Didn’t see that… but is it ‘criminal’ to ignore a movie?