When it comes to movie gangsters, A Most Violent Year‘s Abel Morales (Oscar Issac) may as well be the anti-Tony Montana. Both are immigrants with strong personal drive, but while one might show up at your doorstep with a machine gun, the other’s more likely to come to you begging like either Oliver Twist or a hungry stray dog, which Abel practically does in many scenes. This is the story of someone trying and failing to remain mild mannered in the middle of a war zone.
Though Abel’s nowhere as scrupulous as he presents himself, he generally hates violence and tries to keep most underhanded matters to a bare minimum. At the same time, he’s determined to expand his struggling oil heating business and pass his competitors, and an oil yard by the riverfront just might be his ticket to doing so.
Unfortunately for Abel his adherence to a strict moral code doesn’t do him much good, because writer and director J.C. Chandor has set him in New York’s winter of 1981. Publically accentuated by the death of John Lennon closing the prior year, this was an infamous period for gang violence in the city with over 2,100 murders and 188,000 reports of violent crime (eat your heart out, Florida).
The fictionalized representation of New York’s crime problem is a mysterious series of assaults on Abel’s truck drivers. And when a rising district attorney looking to gain political capitol (David Oyelowo) launches an investigation into Abel’s company for corruption, his bank begins to have second thoughts on providing him with the loan he needs.
Things get even worse for him and his family after they find themselves fending off home invaders, and the cinematography of Bradford Young (who also worked on Selma) makes these among the most tense and dramatic scenes in the film. Eventually his wife Anna (Jessica Chastain) and his attorney Andrew Walsh (Albert Brooks, showing his considerable range) gradually advise him to start bending the rules in order to close the deal, including arming his drivers for security. Ever idealistic, Abel tries to keep the ceiling from caving in by himself, but circumstances force him to change strategies.
Anna, with hints throughout the film of her family’s seedy background, ironically enough is a good example of a complex female character who wields significant influence in a story- within a period piece no less. She clearly loves her husband and kids- Chastain and Issac’s chemistry, both from a touching and volatile perspective, is a driving force in many scenes. Still, she shares Abel’s ambition and is far more willing to take risks in order to get out of a situation.
Oscar Issac plays Abel as someone trying with all his power to keep his composure while dealing with avalanche after avalanche of bad news. Oyelowo’s D.A character is decent, but Brooks is great as both a no-nonsense lawyer and a devil sitting on Abel’s shoulder, and Chastain’s Anna is more or less a toned down Lady MacBeth. Elyes Gabel also adds a poignant element as a long suffering truck driver who Abel tries to protect.
The diversity of the cast, a reflection of the real New York City, is part of the film’s attention to detail in capturing the atmosphere of the times on top of a sense of foreboding. There’s only enough violence in A Most Violent Year to advance what’s mainly a dialogue driven character drama, though two well directed chase scenes make a major impact. I could argue that the title could refer to both its setting and as an analogy for the stress of the situation on our main characters. It could be from a financial, physical mental and emotional point of view if you wish.
It’s an achievement when a film can make its world into a villain you want to see fall, if that makes sense. With its restrained and measured use of action for a mob movie, it does require a lot of patience, but I wouldn’t consider it uncomfortable by any stretch. Subtlety and a slow burn are the fuel driving Violent, and there’s enough humanity amongst all of the chaos and morally flawed cast to make the ride enjoyable and worth it.