Kelly Reichardt’s THE MASTERMIND is in a niche that really appeals to me: the unglamorous crime tale. It’s about an art heist, but there are zero Hollywood-style thrills involved, no witty dialogue, no gun fights, not much in the way of car chases. They seem like regular people, the plan isn’t complicated at all, lots of attention is paid to the slow, mundane details of the process. It’s a period piece, set in 1970 – that’s pretty cool. But it’s not, like… ’70s New York or anything. It’s Framingham, Massachusetts. The one very smart concession to cinematic fantasy is an excellent avant-garde jazz score by Rob Mazurek of Chicago Underground. He plays cornet and I think there’s some piano but sometimes it’s just drums, and it does make everything seem pretty cool.

Josh O’Connor (one of the CHALLENGERS) plays JB, our titular ringleader. The opening scene is a really good introduction to what the movie’s gonna be like, because it’s him in an art museum during regular hours, pretending to look at the art while scoping out how things are secured, how sleepy the security guard is, etc. There’s a mom with two kids there, and one of the kids is going on and on about a code breaking puzzle involving an alien language and how to translate some of the alien words by asking questions with yes or no answers. It’s great because it’s clear this is a kid really trying to explain this idea in his own words, and getting genuinely nerdy about it. A level of kid authenticity not common film.

After JB successfully opens a display case and removes a small figurine it becomes clear that the woman, Terry (Alana Haim, LICORICE PIZZA), is his wife and the kids, Carl and Tommy (Sterling and Jasper Thompson), are his sons. Only a bit later did I realize that Terry wasn’t in on it at all. She had no idea they were creating a distraction. See, she works for a living. He’s a carpenter but he’s unemployed, staying home, sometimes taking care of the boys, but having enough free time to get up to these shenanigans.

He meets in the basement with “the guys,” small time criminals he knows or maybe just other amateurs he’s corrupted – I think they grew up together. Guy (Eli Gelb) is suspicious of Ronnie (Javion Allen) who he just remembers as someone’s kid brother, and who does turn out to be the closest thing to a Mr. Blonde in the bunch. Larry (Cole Doman, MUTT) isn’t trustworthy either – he does steal the car they need but backs out of being the driver. So JB just does it himself.

There’s some seed money required, and fortunately his parents have money. His dad (Bill Camp, DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS) is a judge. JB borrows money from his mom (Hope Davis, KISS OF DEATH), lying that it’s for materials for a big carpentry gig. She seems suspicious – not that he’s a criminal, but that he’s a loser who’s gonna fuck this up and not be able to pay her back.

The plan turns out to be stupidly straight forward. He wants four specific Arthur Dove paintings. He gives them flash cards of what they look like, but they don’t need them. They go in like regular visitors, they grab them off the wall, put them in canvas bags, run off. Of course there are silly things that go wrong: a cop randomly parks nearby to eat a sandwich, a girl on a field trip sees what they’re up to, a teenage girl’s car blocks the exit. They navigate their way through it.

I imagine JB’s favorite part of the whole thing, maybe the greatest moment in his whole life, is when he’s alone with the paintings and gets to take them out of the bags, lean them against his couch and admire them. He got to see them in better lighting at the museum, but here they are in his living room. A real treat. Well, shit, better hide these before Terri gets home from work.

Another moment that must be surreal for him is when the heist is in the news and his dad opines about it at dinner and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. JB plays dumb and only scoffs about it on the drive home.

O’Connor has been around for years but he’s really blowing up lately. I didn’t review it, but he was great in WAKE UP DEAD MAN. His next two movies are a Spielberg and a Joel Coen. He’s perfect for this because he’s so naturally easy going and likable that I was slow in picking up that this guy JB sucks. Even when he gave his kids a couple bucks and told them to wander the city while he did some crime stuff I thought hey, it was the ‘70s. Kids were allowed to explore.

I think the perspective of the movie is “jesus, this guy,” but without laying it on too thick. It becomes more evident as things go wrong, the scheme falls apart, it starts to seem like maybe the mind here didn’t even master up an entire plan. The more things fall apart for him, the messier the narrative structure and the music become. Ronnie gets arrested for an unrelated crime and tells the FBI about JB. Terri is not happy with him after the FBI shows up at their door. Guy sells him out to actual crime professionals who want the paintings. His big escape plan is to go stay with old art school buddies, Fred (John Magaro, MY SOUL TO TAKE) and Maude (Gaby Hoffmann, 13). Fred is boyishly excited that his old friend did something like this, while Maude is just disgusted. Her calm but withering talk with him about it is a highlight and gives us a little more insight into him (since she knows him well enough to figure out why he’s interested in those specific paintings).

Where this is all headed is even more pathetic than expected, to the point that I wasn’t prepared for it to be over yet and found the ending a little abrupt. I was glad the Australian blu-ray had a short interview with Reichardt because what she said about the character and the reasons for setting it during the Vietnam War pointed me toward an interpretation of the ending that pulled it together better for me.

Another good insight from the interview is that she was inspired by a real art theft in the early ‘70s and had to set it around then because such crimes quickly taught museums to have actual security. But the best thing about the interview is that she’s sitting outside by a marina and near the beginning a woman walking in the background suddenly realizes she’s on camera, covers her face and ducks out. JB must’ve done the planning for that shot.

This is very close to what I call Arthouse Badass, but it’s not badass at all, and not even all that arty, except in its avoidance of sensationalism. It’s so simple and unpretentious that somebody might call that pretentious. But for me it’s always interesting and usually fun to have a director like Reichardt, who doesn’t seem interested in genre, playing around just outside the walls of a genre I love. THE MASTERMIND is probly not for most people, but I’m positive some of you will agree with me that it’s a really good one.