Writer-director Kelly Reichardt is “versatile” but also “consistent”, said Jonathan Romney in the Financial Times. Whether her films are about a homeless woman searching for her dog (“Wendy and Lucy”) or eco-activist saboteurs (“Night Moves”), they are all, one way or another, “about the American Condition”. Her latest one is set in Massachusetts at the height of the protests against the Vietnam War in 1970 – which are seen and heard in news footage throughout.
Josh O’Connor plays J.B. Mooney, an art-school drop-out who is married with children, and planning to rob a provincial art gallery in an effort to get rich, because his career is going nowhere. The robbery itself (“managed with fine-tuned suspense”) goes well enough. But Reichardt’s real interest is in the crime’s brooding aftermath. Of course, Mooney is not a mastermind – and things do not turn out well.
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