The Mastermind — Characters & Cast

Not survival but self-image: he wants to be the man who pulled it off, to convert boredom and thwarted pride into proof that he is exceptional.

Begins as an unemployed carpenter with time on his hands and an inflated sense of his own cleverness; executes the museum theft; then spends the rest of the film watching the plan, the money and the people around him fall away. A hairline crack in his seemingly decent personality is prised open by overreach and bad luck, until we understand he was never quite as nice as he appeared — and that his haplessness has been costing other people all along.

Keeping the household intact and demanding, gently and then less gently, that her husband be an adult in it.

Holds the domestic reality J.B. is bored by — children, bills, routine — and is increasingly left to absorb the consequences of a scheme she did not choose. Her steadiness measures exactly how much he is throwing away and how little he registers its cost.

Preserving the family's respectability and managing a son who has never had to face a real consequence.

Embodies the comfortable New England background that has always cushioned J.B. Her presence clarifies the film's class argument: this is a thief with a safety net, and the family's propriety is both his resource and the standard he is failing.