Catch Me If You Can

Who decided that the end of the month should be jammed full of new releases? If it was up to me, I’d spread things out more evenly … but once again, here I am scrambling to catch up to half a dozen discs, and that’s not even counting the collections that landed on the shelves today.

But look! I found two movies that are shadowy reflections of one another – an indie crime drama and a big-budget all-star thriller, each offering its own specific take on the heist genre. Let’s take a look at those today, and save the other stuff for later in the week. Because one of them is the new Kelly Reichardt picture, and no one should have to wait for that.

I described The Mastermind as a crime drama rather than a thriller, because Reichardt doesn’t really work in that mode. If anything, Rivers of Grass and Night Moves frustrated some audiences for focusing on the emotional and psychological impact of law-breaking rather than on the acts themselves; what’s the point of a thriller when you can’t enjoy the crimes?

The point, of course, is that we’re not supposed to. Think of the shoplifting incident that kicks off a world of hurt for Michelle Williams in Wendy and Lucy; Reichardt thrives in the messy ambiguity of people making the wrong choices for what they believe to be the right reasons. With The Mastermind, the title of which is almost certainly ironic, she watches a person make one bad choice after another, refusing to judge him but leaving us plenty of room to do so.

The person in question is J.B. Mooney (Josh O’Connor), an apparently comfortable middle-class New England husband and father in 1970 who, out of boredom or some weird revolutionary impulse, is planning to rob the Framingham Museum of Art. On paper, it’s simple: Security is minimal, the paintings are just waiting to be plucked off the wall, and you can park the getaway car at the front door. His plan appears to be foolproof, until it isn’t – and the cascade of complications that follows winds up costing J.B. everything he loves. Assuming he loved anything in the first place, that is.

The Mastermind doesn’t tell a true story, though Reichardt was certainly inspired by actual events. The attention to the smallest details of time and place, and the deceptively digressive structure, are simply hallmarks of her filmmaking – as is her unflinching observation of J.B., who seems to have less and less to him the longer we watch.

So urgent in Disclosure Day, the usually charismatic O’Connor seems to shrink from Reichardt’s gaze, blunting all of his natural presence to keep J.B. a cipher to his family and friends – played by a killer roster of actors that includes Alanna Haim, Hope Davis, John Magaro, Gaby Hoffman, Bill Camp and an unrecognizable Amanda Plummer – as well as the audience. That just makes us look more closely, of course. Until he disappears.

Reichardt’s previous feature, Showing Up, was her first to get a 4K release; The Mastermind finds Mubi going back to Blu-ray, though the presentation is unimpeachable, with a faithfully grainy transfer of the 16mm feature (with an incongruous but effective 5.1 DTS-HD audio.)

The sole extra is a video essay, “The Mastermind: Unwinding the Heist Film,” by Amos Levin, who uses a comment from Reichardt at a New York Film Festival Q&A to dissect the movie’s unconventional approach to its plot, and contrast it with earlier films in the genre and one key inspiration Reichardt insisted her cast check out before production started. Those seeking to delve further into the world of the may want to check out the MUBI Editions booklet set, which is teased by some postcards included with the disc.

There are no supplements at all on Crime 101, which is starting to feel like an unofficial policy for Alliance Home Entertainment’s physical releases of Amazon MGM Studios’ output. Next month’s Project Hail Mary has been announced as including a commentary and a featurette, with a three-disc special edition on the way in October, and I wonder how hard Phil Lord and Christopher Miller had to fight for those things.

That said, I’m not sure there’s all that much to say about Bart Layton’s glossy, expensive cat-and-mouse thriller about a detective and a thief chasing each other around Los Angeles; it really is just an update of Michael Mann’s Heat, three decades later.

Seriously, stop me if you’ve heard this before: Against a pulsing metropolitan cityscape of fast cars, glittering towers and cool blue-black tones, master thief Mike (Chris Hemsworth) has carried out one perfect heist after another, moving with such speed and precision most cops don’t even believe his robberies are even connected.

But one man does: Lou (Mark Ruffalo), who’s noticed a very simple pattern: All of Mike’s targets are within a mile of the 101 freeway, the better to make a quick getaway. And when Mike misses just one detail in his latest job, Lou has the shred of proof to convince his partner (Corey Hawkins) the guy is real – and the chase is on.

There are some modest tweaks, like a running gag that finds both Mike and Lou – and most of the other characters – working on themselves through various New Age means, telling us they’ve all been living in Los Angeles just a little too long.

And there’s more of an age-appropriate vibe to the romance between Mike and the charming civilian Maya (Monica Barbaro) than Mann gave to Robert De Niro and Amy Brenneman back in the day. Ruffalo’s newly separated Lou is allowed a little scruffy flirtation with Halle Berry’s insurance broker Sharon, whom Mike has tried to recruit for an upcoming job.

Barry Keoghan is also around as a sociopath called Ormon who’s looking to replace Mike as LA’s best heister. He’s a dope, but he’s a violent dope, and that makes him dangerous not just to Mike but to anyone around them.

But … I mean, it’s Heat! It’s just Heat! It’s a very pretty version of Heat, with a bigger budget than Mann could have dreamed of, but f you’ve seen that movie, you’ve seen Crime 101 as well. And honestly? You’ll wonder why you’re not just watching Heat.

Still, if you’re going down this road, Alliance’s 4K disc is the best way to watch the movie. Prime Video’s 4K feed isn’t nearly as robust as this disc, which offers a big ol’ bitrate for both the UHD video and the Dolby Atmos soundtrack; DTS-HD 5.1 audio is also included, if you’d rather not have Blanck Mass’ score pulsing on your ceiling.

The Mastermind is now available on Blu-ray from MUBI. Crime 101 is available in separate 4K and Blu-ray editions from Alliance Home Entertainment.

Up next: More! Specifically, It Was Just an Accident, They Will Kill You and, finally, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert. And those boxed sets I mentioned? Oh, they’re coming.