A Most Violent Year

Director: J. C. Chandor
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo, and Albert Brooks
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 124 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2015

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Rating notes: Strong violence and coarse language

This is an American crime drama set in 1981, a year that was one of “the most violent years in the history of New York City”, USA.

The film won awards from the National Board of Review in the categories of Best Film, Best Actor (shared), and Best Supporting Actress, and was voted one of the top ten films of 2014 by the New York Film Critics. It focuses brilliantly, but darkly, on the lives of an ambitious Columbian immigrant, Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) and his family in the winter of 1981.

Abel Morales is a dapper, controlled, and meticulous man, trying in a driven way to capitalise on opportunities for growth to his heating-oil company business in New York. It is a time when violence and corruption are endemic. Just when he is about to close on a property deal that will make him rich with the help of his lawyer (Albert Brooks), the FBI starts investigating him, hijackers target his trucks, his drivers are assaulted and shot at, and his heating-oil stolen. David Ovelowo is the ambitious district attorney working for the FBI.

The rates of murder, rape and assault in New York are high, and mobsters are around to gain. Abel’s wife, Anna (Jessica Chastain), stands by her husband, knowing the dangers he is facing. She understands what is happening, because her brother and father, who sold Abel his business, are mafia gangsters. Strong-willed, she tries to force her husband into action. Anna wants to draw on her mafia family to help him, but also wants to protect her marriage to the man she loves. Abel knows this, but refuses the help of the mob, because he wants to do things “the right way”.

This is not a gangster movie. It is an intelligent and perceptive character drama about people compromised by the pressures of the times. Abel is a person who is honest and cares for others. He has ideals and morals, but no one around him has any use for either of them. Although Anna wants to help him, she is conflicted about how best to do that, and Abel feels the tension that she creates. He knows he is someone “who has never taken anything from anybody”, and he wants to stay an “honourable man”. In almost everything Abel does, though he is ambitious, he struggles morally against the tide. He tries not to be a criminal, and not to be someone who gives in to the forces of corruption. He strives to run a straight company in an industry that is crooked. The promises of “The American Dream” to an immigrant like him are too elusive.

The atmosphere of a city criminally under siege is captured wonderfully well in the film. Subdued colour tones give the movie a washed-out look, while particular scenes are splashed with vivid colour. The film’s scripting is sharp, and its editing is tight. Very good photography makes the film a compelling period piece, and Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain are outstanding as the couple whose lives are put under enormous stress.

Chastain, in particular, communicates love, affection, aggression, and threat all at the same time. While she loves her husband, and is alarmed at her own daughter’s playing with a loaded gun, deep down, she thinks (and behaves) like a mobster-father’s daughter.

With a title like this one, violence is to be expected, but the level of violence in the film is not nearly as graphic or explicit as one would expect from the film’s title. There is a harrowing suicide scene in the movie, but overall this is a tough, gritty character drama that demonstrates compellingly the conflict between human compassion and understanding and the forces that exist to repress them.

Abel is a character, who battles valiantly against corruption, and as far as this movie is concerned, “The American Dream” is not yet for his taking. All the time, the film intentionally skirts the edge of criminality that threatens to overtake him, but Abel’s resolve to do things “right” remains firm. His moral rectitude never wavers, but there is an intriguing hint of ambiguity at the end of the film that Abel may not “always take the path that is mostly right” as success and influence later come within his grasp.

This is am enormously well crafted and intricate film that is directed, photographed and acted with great force. The movie captures New York brilliantly at a very dark and unfortunate time. Under the expert direction of J.C. Chandor, it builds up the tension associated with its interconnecting sub-plots very effectively and in a wonderfully measured way.

This film has to be one of the great “sleeper” quality movies of the year. It is not to be missed.