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Posted by on Feb 2, 2015 in Blog, Movie Reviews | 1 comment

A Most Violent Year (Movie Review)

 

A Most Violent Year

 

New York City’s masterful crime dramas of the 1970’s weren’t just epic battles between the forces of good and evil.  The very best movies of that genre were poetic morality tales played out on the big screen.  In between sporadic scenes of bloodshed — godfathers, gangsters, policemen, and prosecutors paused to soliloquize about personal honor and so-called sacred codes of conduct.  Cops weren’t always the good guys, and criminals were necessarily bad.  Perpetually clashing worlds were a murky shade of gray.  The clouds never cleared.

 

A Most Violent Year evokes the same gritty realism of those earlier times, every bit as reminiscent of The French Connection (1971), Serpico (1973), and Prince of the City (1980).  This comparative leap to the memorable films of Sydney Lumet and William Friedkin isn’t taken lightly, nor made frivolously.

Set in 1981, New York remains very much a violent, dirty, corrupt, and at times dysfunctional cesspool of lawlessness existing beneath the corrosive layers of city bureaucracy.  The only law worth abiding by is Darwin’s — as in, the survival of the fittest.  Those who do manage to survive must constantly juggle their own ethics against the backdrop of far bigger scales tipped heavily against anyone who’s naïve enough to believe the sewer offers any means of escape.  It doesn’t.  Nothing along the Brooklyn waterfront comes as a clean proposition, nor is any offer made without some strings attached.  Doing business always comes at a price.  All profit and production are tainted.  Even easy money is earned the hard way.

As with all morality tales, there’s usually a hero convinced that he’s above everything and everyone else, the saint among sinners who’s incorruptible.  In A Most Violent Year, this knightly responsibility goes to actor Oscar Isaac, playing an honest businessman involved in a very dirty business.  He’s a small-time operator in the big-time cutthroat trade of selling home heating oil.  He struggles desperately not just to survive in this rusty oil drum polluted with far worse rivals and the taint of Mafioso, and even local law enforcement who are all determined to bring him down and carve up his share of a lucrative market, but also grow his business honestly.

No doubt, Isaac’s charismatic onscreen presence and mannerisms in this film will remind some viewers of a just as dapper Al Pacino in The Godfather II.  Impeccably tailored and guided by a steady calm and a constant glare, Isaac never lets his eye wander off the prize.  Where lesser and weaker men would have gone bust or been too intimidated to continue, Isaac’s steely determination combined with honor gives the audience its thoroughly convincing and most deserving champion.

Less conscientious is his far more practical working-class wife, played by actress Jessica Chastain in her most varied and demanding onscreen performance to date.  Chastain agrees to abide by her husband’s lofty rules, but only so long as the family stays protected and safe from increasing threats.  When that’s jeopardized, the white gloves come off and the loaded handgun gets pulled out, ready to fire.  These differences in dealing with all the pressure create a rift in the marriage.  Indeed, Isaac and Chastain are both standouts in a movie requiring nothing less than absolute credibility as characters.  Together, they carry the film from start to finish, tempting us to find out who will end up were dead or alive.

A Most Violent Year works because it’s not only utterly convincing, but also stacked with suspenseful moments, junctions when we wonder what compromises will have to be made, or perhaps what and who’s body parts might turn up in the East River.  Buoyed by a pulsating soundtrack that evokes a world beyond their control slowly closing in frame by frame, and aided by lots of well-choreographed interplay between a chorus line of shadowy figures pushing in on the walls, there’s just enough wiggle room to maneuver towards the somewhat foreseeable back alley brawl on the waterfront with Manhattan’s mammoth skyline as the larger canvass, where combatants are each armed with lethal weapons — be they handguns, fountain pens, or federal indictments.

Written and directed by J.C. Chandor [Margin Call (2011) and All is Lost (2013)], this is one of the top ten films of the year, with several outstanding performances — most notably by Oscar Isaac in a breakout film role.

While the challenges of creating a compelling script about such unconventional cinematic subject matter were obvious, the story rings true to life.  Never has the home heating oil business come across as such a riveting subject for a movie.  And aside from wondering how fates will turn out, the even bigger mystery after departing the theater is why this stylish film failed to receive even a single Oscar nomination.  That’s a shame.  This is undoubtedly the worst oversight for any film made in 2014.

A Most Violent Year deserves far more recognition.  Moreover, it demands to be seen and savored, especially by those longing for those great earlier crime films of yesteryear.

Rating:  8 Out of 1o Stars

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