John Powers

That includes a visit to his friends, a hippie couple marvelously played by John Magaro and Gabby Hoffman.

That's like a desolately amusing snapshot of an entire era.

Serenaded by Rob Mazurek's jazz score that both heightens and mocks his situation, J.B.

's whole life has become a snafu.

Now, as she's shown in movies as diverse as Old Joy, about two friends going camping, or First Cow, about milk thieves in the Old West, Reichert's granular approach is far calmer and more oblique than her peers'.

Seeking to catch moments that flicker with the rising sparks of life, her camera is curious about things that may seem off the point, like a garrulous child yakking happily in the museum, or accentuates something we may not have fully noticed before.

As J.B.

waits for his cronies in the getaway car, we register not just his anxiety, but his boredom.

O'Connor is a compellingly ambiguous actor.

He doesn't insist that we love him, and he commands the screen just thinking.

His gloomy-eyed J.B.

never tells us what he's after, but we sense that he's one of those quiet men who feel trapped in middle-class life and are prepared to chew off their paw to escape it.

Where many male directors might find this heroic, Reichert finds it deluded and often comical.

She can spot a narcissist at a hundred yards.

Unlike so many crime movies, The Mastermind sets the action in a very specific time and place.

Not only does Reichert give us a small Massachusetts city in all its 70s sleepy pseudo-innocence,

She keeps J.B.

and us bumping into the story's precise historical moment, with its Vietnam War on TV, street protests, and pundits talking about millions of people feeling, quote, powerlessness, cynicism, and apathy.

Words that could all apply to J.B.

As it happens, the anti-war demonstrations turn out to have a bearing on J.B.