‘Masterminds’ an average movie with exceptional comic acting

‘Masterminds’ an average movie with exceptional comic acting

Here’s a case of a pleasing average movie.

A comedy based on the 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery in North Carolina, “Masterminds” tells the story of a motley gang that robbed $17 million in cash from a security company, the biggest heist in American history.

On the downside, the movie is something of a mishmash of tones, and the end brings no particular sense of arrival.

[...] the movie has one great, redeeming quality, which is its comic acting.

They are completely in their roles, completely invested in the seriousness and truth of their characters’ thoughts and emotions, but they are aware, as if watching from the tiniest of distances, that they are playing ridiculous people.

There’s something strangely appealing about a character who wants the world and doesn’t know how pathetic he is — maybe because we all secretly wonder if we’re in the same boat and just don’t know it.

Jason Sudeikis shows up as a perverted hit man, and he does a fine job of being creepy, but the character itself is discordant and strains at the boundaries of the comedy.

[...] director Jared Hess, either through his own invention or an intelligent willingness to let his actors run with it, finds little ways to lift almost every scene.