A Most Violent Year

A Most Violent Year (15)

USA 2014  125 mins  Dir: J.C. Chandor  Starring: Oscar Issac, Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo, Alessandro Nivola, Albert Brooks

With a title like that, you might be forgiven for anticipating shootouts, menacing gangsters and non-stop action, all snappily cut to a Scorsese-esque period rock soundtrack. But while J.C. Chandor’s third film as director, after financial crisis drama Margin Call and Robert Redford at sea adventure All Is Lost, opens in promising Godfather mould, it turns out to be low-key, understated and sombre, with a matching muted colour palette and brooding score. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find an expertly sketched, skilfully performed character study unfolding in a variety of authentically grimy urban industrial locations – albeit one that fizzles when it might benefit from a few more dramatic fireworks. Little wonder that it now seems likely to walk away empty handed after some early awards season hype.

The year in question is 1981, statistically the most violent 12 month period in New York City’s history. Against this backdrop, sharply dressed, ambitious immigrant Abel Morales (Isaac) resolves to live the American Dream, beating his competitors in the murky home heating oil game through sheer hard work and determination to be the best. This is going to be quite a challenge, as demonstrated by the opening scene in which one of his drivers is brutally beaten and robbed of a tanker at gunpoint. To expand his business, Abel is purchasing a run-down terminal from a Hasidic Jew, who warns him that he will lose his vast deposit if he fails to meet the agreed payment schedule. But the campaign of intimidation against his business and family continues. As Abel struggles to pinpoint the guilty party, his brassy mobster’s daughter wife Anna (Chastain) urges him to fight back, while a Teamsters’ union official lobbies him to arm his drivers. When he appeals to the Assistant DA (Oyelowo) for help, he not only gets an unsympathetic response but is informed that he’s to be charged with fraud and tax evasion.

The performances are excellent. Isaac, who made such an impression in the Coens’ Inside Llewyn Davis, underlines his rising star status as the complex, steely, proud and occasionally unreadable Abel, who finds himself manoeuvred into a position of ethical flexibility. Chastain broadens her range as his indomitable moll of a wife – equal parts Lady Macbeth and Sharon Stone in Casino – who knows the score when it comes to “standard industry practices”, which don’t quite chime with her husband’s desire to run a “fair and clean business”. Chandor makes little secret of his debt to Sidney Lumet, though this is all rather slow and a little stodgy by comparison to the likes of Serpico, with only a belated chase sequence to quicken the pulse and a tacked-on ending that slips into regrettable melodrama.