The Mastermind 4K 2025 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

1970, Framingham, Massachusetts. James Blaine Mooney, a loser and the son of a district judge, is unemployed and a burden on his parents and his working wife, who supports their family of four. One day, he steals a small figurine from a local art museum and decides to pull off a bigger heist—stealing four paintings by Arthur Doove. Together with his accomplices, he successfully carries out the plan, but later runs into serious trouble.

Review 4K Movie

Kelly Reichardt, who prefers to make slow-paced films, directed and wrote the crime drama *The Inspirer*. It features a deliberate, unhurried narrative in which the plot never tries to pick up speed. As a result, it’s designed more for contemplation than for entertainment.

Josh O’Connor plays the lead role. In my opinion, it would have been hard to make a better choice, because this actor has already proven himself with his ability to appear calm on the outside but be deeply sensitive on the inside—a child with the wise face of an adult. “The Chimera” is excellent proof of that.

You need to be mentally prepared before watching it—this is precisely due to the nature of slow cinema. *The Inspirer* is an atypical heist story in which the planning is shown first, followed by the crime itself, and then the aftermath—in other words, it’s a far cry from F. Gary Gray’s *The Italian Job* or Gary Ross’s *Ocean’s Eight*, for example.

In this case, such elements serve as a backdrop to the main character’s personality, and the very concept of a heist pertains more to J.B. than to the museum. The most intense action in the film is the citizens’ violent protests against U.S. intervention in Vietnam, which play out against the backdrop of the main plot. And the musical score here runs counter to the plot—it’s more jazz-like than danceable, even when you feel like tapping your feet along to it.

Like the screenplay for this drama, Kelly Reichardt also handled the editing herself to maintain the pace. For inspiration, she drew on the real-life heist of the Worcester Art Museum in May 1972 in Worcester, Massachusetts.

The mastermind behind the heist was Florian Mondi. He hired two other people to carry out four paintings. At that time, Rembrandt’s *Saint Bartholomew*, Pablo Picasso’s *Mother and Child*, and Paul Gauguin’s *Pensive Woman* and *Head of a Woman* were “taken” from the museum; the total value of the paintings was estimated at that time at two million dollars.

In the film, however, the paintings stolen were by the abstract artist Arthur Dava: “Tree Forms” (1932), “Weeping Willow” (1937, *Willow Tree*), “Tanks & Snowbanks” (1938), and “Yellow, Blue-Green, and Brown” (1941). Kelly Reichardt chose these paintings because of their size.
Dava’s paintings are mostly small, but the plot required ones that couldn’t be hidden in a pocket or under a jacket.

The drama *The Inspirer*, for all its tedium, raises interesting points—that the world is shrouded in indifference, which extends to both works of art (the museum’s security system is useless, judging by how easily an exhibit can be carried out of there) and people, who tolerate one another rather than appreciate one another. The main character, J.B., would rather devise silly schemes involving the museum than focus on raising his sons. And most importantly—no matter what upheavals the world is going through, people will always find time to do something foolish. This is probably the main subtext of the plot.