Massachusetts, 1970s. The job market is precarious, especially for people like him: vain, restless, and bored by the small-minded routine of suburban life. His father is a judge and never lets him forget it. Mocked at the dinner table and constantly compared to those who have “made something of themselves,” he is already plotting his coup in secret. The one that will change his life. With the help of a few accomplices, he plans to rob the local museum of four paintings. A sleeping guard, few visitors; the odds seem promising. The possible consequences, however, were never considered.

Director Kelly Reichardt is known for her focus on society’s outsiders. She doesn’t romanticize the marginal figures she portrays but shows them in all their flaws and contradictions. In her new film The Mastermind, J.B. Mooney, an outsider who initially wins the audience’s sympathy, becomes a criminal who doesn’t shy away from violence. What begins as a humorous rebellion against the dull bourgeois life of the 1970s soon turns into a story of fear, overreach, and downfall. In the end, he finds himself in prison, but not for the crime he actually committed.

The art heist carried out by J.B. Mooney and his partners is set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War protests – events that seem to leave the protagonist unmoved, until he realizes he can benefit from them.

The Mastermind is a film about the romanticized fantasy of the gangster dream and a critique of the protagonist’s uncompromising individualism, without condescension.