The Mastermind
MUBI | Release Date: October 17, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
80
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
30
Mixed:
6
Negative:
1

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleOct 17, 2025
One can even detect, in this brilliant, captivating Reichardt gem about fortune and fate, a what-if attached to her disaffected male protagonist: Would today’s version of James, just as adrift and arrogant, steal art to assuage his emptiness? Or, thanks to the internet, succeed at something much worse? “The Mastermind” may be an ironic title as heists go. But it also hints at the male-pattern badness still to come. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubLuke HicksJun 3, 2025
A film so pure in its simplicity, relatable in its banality, quiet in its captivation, that it pulls off a nearly impossible feat: It’s a heist film that can’t be called a thriller. Read full review
100
The Film StageRory O'ConnorMay 28, 2025
With The Mastermind, Reichardt has made a unique film, even amongst similarly cryptic genre exercises. . . I left the cinema gripped and unusually rattled. Read full review
100
Screen DailyTim GriersonMay 23, 2025
Josh O’Connor is marvelous as this sputtering soul with no aptitude for illegality — or, frankly, anything else — as he drifts through an unremarkable life that’s slowly slipping through his fingers. Read full review
100
VarietyJessica KiangMay 23, 2025
Very possibly her most accessible and enjoyable film to date, still it remains an unmistakably Reichardtian investigation into the fabric of ordinariness and what happens when it frays. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreMay 23, 2025
Like so much of Reichardt’s output, The Mastermind feels modest when you’re watching it and downright brilliant once it’s had some time to settle in your mind. Read full review
95
IGNChase HutchinsonMay 28, 2025
Kelly Reichardt’s heist movie The Mastermind is crackingly, urgently alive, an assured and magnificent addition to an already storied body of work. Read full review
91
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzOct 23, 2025
As is the case with much of Reichardt’s work, The Mastermind is a genre movie that zeroes in on a formula only to meticulously scrawl over it in jet-black ink. Read full review
90
The AtlanticShirley LiOct 23, 2025
What J. B. has aced is clearly not the art of persuasion or thievery. His real specialty, The Mastermind suggests, is his ability to tune out everything but his own wants and needs. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisOct 17, 2025
Like the overall movie, the character opens up incrementally to quiet, meaningful effect. Read full review
90
The RevealScott TobiasOct 16, 2025
The true audacity of The Mastermind may be Reichardt’s conception of J.B. himself, who not only lacks nobility or competence, but possesses a compelling vacancy that’s harder to unpack. Read full review
90
The New YorkerRichard BrodyOct 15, 2025
Even before the thieves cross the building’s threshold, “The Mastermind” emerges as an instant heist classic. Reichardt’s granular view of the plot, clearly bound for disaster, is both terribly sad and absurdly funny. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenNov 14, 2025
O’Connor balances an outer reticence with an inner confidence throughout, then slyly brings the two qualities together as the film proceeds (notice how he fiddles with his wedding ring while otherwise effortlessly lying to a pair of detectives). J.B. isn’t an antihero, exactly, but something more fitting for a Kelly Reichardt film. Read full review
88
The Travers TakePeter TraversOct 17, 2025
Josh O’Connor and director Kelly Reichardt tell the story of an amateur art thief who’s not as smart or cool as he thinks he is, though the movie is both those things Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzOct 17, 2025
Reichardt—who also edited the film and has said that she based the story on details from many real-life people and incidents, including the 1972 robbery of an art museum in Worcester, Massachusetts—builds the movie with her characteristic mix of dry humor, incisive psychological details, and elegant, minimalistic visuals. Read full review
85
The Daily BeastNick SchagerSep 28, 2025
Saying little but speaking volumes about American disaffection, apathy, self-interest, and foolishness, [O’Connor’s] performance bolsters this askew heist film and cements his status as cinema’s most magnetic new leading man. Read full review
83
Original-CinKaren GordonOct 20, 2025
It takes incredible talent to make something this spare work. The Mastermind is the kind of high-wire act that only someone as gifted as Reichardt could pull off. Read full review
83
Paste MagazineJesse HassengerSep 26, 2025
The movie evokes retro genre coziness and unease in equal measure, one creeping up from beneath the other. Read full review
83
The PlaylistIana MurrayMay 28, 2025
The Mastermind sees Reinhardt working with a bigger budget and a larger scale, but she never loses her languorous, absorbing sensibilities as a filmmaker. She’s never been better. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeOct 24, 2025
This is a cinema of introversion, concealment and evasion. Nothing is given up easily. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyOct 24, 2025
When the inevitable comes for our protagonist, The Mastermind delivers it as one of the smartest, wryest punchlines of the year. Read full review
80
Little White LiesHannah StrongOct 22, 2025
It’s a film that understands there’s nothing to be gained from making oneself an island, but remains stoic and unsentimental in its vision of the past. Read full review
80
Screen RantGregory NussenOct 16, 2025
Through the period and genre trappings of a 1970s heist film, Reichardt explores the inherent isolation of staying neutral at a time of ballooning cultural and political unrest. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 23, 2025
The dreary details of post-heist calamity are as pertinent as the main event. It is this that attracts Reichardt’s observing eye and makes The Mastermind so quietly gripping. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 23, 2025
Reichardt has made a genre picture that peels away all the usual tropes to focus on character, on human failings and on the reality that even someone from a comfortable middle-class background can be worn down by struggle and reach for unwise solutions. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 30, 2025
Reichardt takes her time setting up this slow-motion trainwreck and keeps her cards close to her vest in terms of character details that underscore just how “wrong” this whole thing goes. She spares us the melodramatics and just lets things happen and the consequences be accepted in ways no conventional thriller would. Read full review
75
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckOct 15, 2025
Usually a cinematic heist is spectacular — in its success or its failure. Reichardt has removed all spectacle, telling instead a moody tale of a man who makes a dumb mistake and slowly loses everything, like a tumble down a mountain in slow motion. Read full review
75
IndieWireRyan LattanzioMay 23, 2025
The Mastermind is a study in one man’s selfishness, his compulsion toward crime as a thrill sport, toward daring himself to execute a challenge to shake up his own humdrum day-to-day schtick. Read full review
70
TimeStephanie ZacharekOct 17, 2025
The Mastermind is a sneaky, undulating movie; it’s perhaps even less direct than Reichardt’s usual brand of sly, behind-the-beat filmmaking. But O’Connor’s slippery charms hold the picture steady. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineBrad HanfordSep 23, 2025
The Mastermind marks a new chapter in Kelly Reichardt’s ongoing tapestry of American life through the eyes of its eccentric outsiders, specifically capping off a trilogy about the intersection of art and commerce at differing stages of American capitalism. Read full review
60
EmpireHelen O'HaraOct 24, 2025
A crime thriller with no interest in thrills and not much in crime, this is an at times frustrating character study of a guy who can’t get out of his own way. Read full review
60
Time OutPhil de SemlyenMay 27, 2025
Unfolding at the American filmmaker’s measured tempo, it’s more droll than LOL-funny, though there are some big laughs along the way. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 23, 2025
After the novelistic strengths of First Cow and Showing Up, Kelly Reichardt turns in something here that’s more like a short story – unhurried, pleasurable, and low key. Read full review
50
IONCINEMA.comNicholas BellOct 17, 2025
Compared to Reichardt’s greatest hits thus far, it’s her least compelling presentation of a solitary, melancholic character to date. Read full review
40
The TimesEd PottonMay 23, 2025
This being Reichardt, white-knuckle thrills were unlikely to be on the menu either, but you would have hoped for something to engage with beyond a vague hum of disappointment. Read full review
40
ColliderTherese LacsonMay 23, 2025
The Mastermind vascillates between wanting to lean into the thrills of a heist and falling back on Reichardt's tried-and-true formula. The result is a confusing mix of tones with a fairly basic concept that rarely dips below the surface. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonOct 24, 2025
If only this movie weren’t as slow as a sleepwalkng turtle. The story is constructed like one big, dark joke whose punchline isn’t worth sitting through 110 minutes to hear. Read full review
More From This Movie

80 Critic Reviews

tbd User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 72 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL