The Mastermind (2025) review

With the Vietnam War (sadly) still underway, suburban dad (and cabinet maker) J.B. Mooney (Josh O'Connor) devises a plan to steal four Arthur Dove paintings from the Framingham Museum of Art in broad daylight and borrows money from his mother Sarah (Hope Davis) to pay his accomplices, except right after he acquires the works (and hides them in a barn) he receives a visit from the Feds and tries to flee to Canada.  The jazz score by Rob Mazurek (inspired, perhaps, by David Holmes' soundtrack for Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven) and Christopher Blauvelt's grainy cinematography give it an appropriate early 70's feel, but the Mooney character is a mostly loathsome dingbat, and the film (in typical Reichardt fashion) seems quite underwritten: merely playing news clips pertaining to the conflict in Southeast Asia and having Mooney getting arrested at an anti-war rally in Cincinnati says nothing about either J.B. or the war itself.  It becomes clear around midway through that the title can only be interpreted as a sarcastic joke: Mooney's not a smart criminal, he (apparently) flunked out of his art program and he thoughtlessly abandons his wife Terri (Alana Haim) and two dorky sons (Sterling and Jasper Thompson), who seem like they dropped in from a Wes Anderson movie.