Masterminds

I spent the first ten minutes of Masterminds wondering if the hair and makeup department was intentionally trying to sabotage Zach Galifianakis. As David Ghantt, a real-life armored car guard who managed to pull off a $17 million heist in 1997, Galifianakis sports a blonde, bowl-cut-adjacent mop that looks like a terrified animal is nesting on his skull. It’s the kind of haircut that screams "I have never made a good life choice," which, as it turns out, is the thesis statement for this entire movie.

I watched this film on a rainy Tuesday night while my neighbor was outside power-washing his driveway for three hours. The steady, aggressive whirrr of the water against the pavement provided a surprisingly fitting rhythmic backdrop to the chaotic, low-stakes energy of David Ghantt’s life.

The Weirdness of the True South

If you’re familiar with the work of director Jared Hess, who gave us the indie phenomenon Napoleon Dynamite and the luchador-fever-dream Nacho Libre, you know his visual language. He loves high-waisted pants, awkward silences, and characters who are just a few degrees off-center from reality. In Masterminds, he applies that "awkward-core" aesthetic to the 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery in North Carolina.

In a contemporary landscape where most true-crime adaptations are self-serious prestige dramas or gritty "grifter" documentaries on Netflix, Masterminds is a refreshing, if messy, throwback. It doesn't want to analyze the socio-economic factors that led to the heist; it just wants to show you Zach Galifianakis trying to hide $17 million in a pair of oversized cargo shorts. The film’s greatest strength is that it treats its Southern setting not as a punchline, but as a colorful, bizarro diorama where everyone is just trying their best with very limited cognitive resources.

An SNL All-Star Game

The cast list reads like a mid-2010s Saturday Night Live fever dream. You have Kristen Wiig as the manipulative Kelly Campbell, Leslie Jones as the exasperated FBI agent, and Jason Sudeikis (well before his Ted Lasso days) playing a psychopathic hitman. But the real scene-stealer is Kate McKinnon as David’s fiancé, Jandice.

Every time McKinnon is on screen, the movie shifts into a higher gear of surrealism. Her performance is basically a series of increasingly uncomfortable staring contests with the camera, and I found myself wishing the movie would just follow her character to the grocery store instead of focusing on the actual robbery. She plays Jandice with a rigid, terrifying sincerity that makes you wonder if she’s actually a shapeshifting alien trying to blend in at a Sears.

On the other side of the heist, we have Owen Wilson as Steve Chambers, the "mastermind" behind the plan. Wilson plays Steve with that signature "Wow" energy, but filtered through a layer of suburban sleaze. He’s the kind of villain who thinks he’s an international criminal genius because he bought a jet ski with stolen money. Watching him interact with Wiig—who is arguably the most grounded person in this circus—highlights the film’s specific comedic rhythm: it’s a lot of people talking past each other while the world around them slowly catches fire.

The Limbo of the Mid-Budget Comedy

There’s a reason Masterminds feels a bit like a "forgotten oddity" despite its massive star power. It was caught in the crosshairs of Relativity Media’s bankruptcy, sitting on a shelf for over a year after filming was completed. By the time it actually hit theaters in 2016, the cultural conversation had moved on, and the era of the $25 million mid-budget studio comedy was already starting to evaporate.

Today, a movie like this would likely be a "Netflix Original" dumped on a Friday morning to be watched in the background while folding laundry. But seeing it now, it feels like a relic of a time when we still put major comedic ensembles on the big screen just to see them be idiots for 90 minutes. This movie has the structural integrity of a wet taco, but that’s precisely why it works—it’s a loose, improvisational mess that leans into the stupidity of its real-life source material.

The action sequences are appropriately clumsy. There are no John Wick stunts here; instead, we get Jason Sudeikis accidentally Pepper-spraying himself and Galifianakis engaging in a high-speed chase involving a van that looks like it’s held together by duct tape and prayers. The stunt work feels physical and heavy, mostly because these characters are so fundamentally un-athletic that every fall looks like it actually hurt.

Masterminds isn't going to change your life, and it’s certainly not the "masterclass" in comedy that its cast list might suggest. However, as a document of a very specific era of comedy—and as a showcase for Zach Galifianakis's ability to be charmingly pathetic—it’s a solid way to kill an hour and a half. It’s a film that embraces the fact that sometimes, history isn't made by the brilliant, but by the bored and the misguided.

It’s the kind of movie you find while scrolling through a streaming service at 11 PM and decide to give a chance because you miss seeing Kristen Wiig make weird faces. It delivers exactly what it promises: a handful of genuine belly laughs, a lot of questionable Southern accents, and the comforting knowledge that no matter how much you’ve messed up your week, you haven't "stuffed $17 million into a van and moved to Mexico with a fake mustache" messed up. Sometimes, that’s all the insight you need from a Tuesday night movie.