Review: A Most Violent Year

In just four years and now three films, director J.C. Chandor has become cinema's new chameleon. He has jumped tones, genres and time periods with each of his films. Margin Call was a talky portrait of the 2008 financial crisis. All is Lost was a sea set survival picture that was almost wordless. And now A Most Violent Year is set in New York in 1981 and is basically a crime film in the style of Sidney Lumet. That ability to jump styles and stories is impressive but all the more since A Most Violent Year is Chandor's best effort yet.

Oscar Isaac, in a terrific performance of understatement, plays heating-oil magnate Abel Morales As the film opens he and his attorney, Albert Brooks, negotiate the purchase of an abandoned waterfront fuel yard. The terms are unforgiving: Abel has 30 days to fork over $1.5 million or he forfeits a sizable cash advance and the property gets sold to one of his competitors. Will things go wrong? Of course they will. Somebody keeps hijacking Abel’s trucks at gunpoint, and the district attorney reveals that he’s conducting an investigation of the entire industry, with a special emphasis on Abel’s firm.  Morales must also balance a home life that is threatening to fall apart.

Chandor brings this intrigue to a marvelously slow boil, turning up the heat on Abel a degree at a time until his principles are in a puddle at his feet. There are a couple of exciting set pieces, including a superb chase sequence in which Abel pursues one of the hijackers along some train tracks. The film resists playing into these exciting scenes too much and instead focuses on the moral decisions one must make to survive. The final moments hark back to Breaking Bad. 

Its one problematic aspect involves Abel’s wife, Anna (Jessica Chastain), who’s instrumental in the fight to keep the business afloat. While she's not the pretty but dim mob wife we see a lot, she isn't a fully fleshed out alternative either.  Her sole function is to be even more ruthless than Abel. She has zero complexity and instead feels like a caricature of a once interesting character. It's not Chandor's job to pull the crime genre out of the boy's club but he misses an opportunity to let an actress of great talent bring more to a character not usually found in these films.

4.5/5