The Mastermind is ostensibly a heist film, but it’s really the story of a middle-class male in 1970s Massachusetts who attempts to steal the objects of someone else’s success to compensate for his inability to achieve. All of which is to say that The Mastermind is another detail-oriented, genre-bending and altogether terrific film from director Kelly Reichardt, one where story and character are conveyed in small strokes that leave much for the viewer to consider. As only she can, Reichardt delivers a low-key, frequently funny and increasingly damning portrait of a self-sabotaging American whose shortcut to self-realization results in a multi-state effort to escape his responsibility to his fraying family and his fractured society.

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