In the wintry air of A Most Violent Year, a would-be business magnate named Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) sports a handsome camel-hair topcoat. He’d like to achieve success the honest way, and that immaculate coat is like his shining armor. Problem is, this is 1981-era New York, the business is heating oil, and nothing stays clean for very long here. Writer/director J.C. Chandor is skillful with these details—this is a very intricate story—and quiet in his approach. Abel’s jacket is the flashiest thing about the movie.
The opening sequence has Abel and his lawyer (a fine Albert Brooks) striking a deal to buy a choice piece of East River waterfront. If Abel can just secure the financing to close the deal in a few days’ time, he’ll be set up for life in the heating-oil game; and he’ll have gotten there—at least according to his own bearings—honestly. Then the financing collapses (longtime Seattle actor John Procaccino delivers nicely in a couple of scenes as a banker), and Abel must scramble to get money from people who do not usually keep their coats so clean. Added to the pressure is an insinuating district attorney (Selma star David Oyelowo) and Abel’s fierce wife Anna (Jessica Chastain), who happens to be the daughter of a local mobster. It’s possible she admires Abel for his ethical stance, but her take on life is a little worldlier than his. Beneath the Armani dresses is a Lady Macbeth who will do what needs to get done. The actors are a splendid pair: Isaac, of Inside Llewyn Davis, captures the immigrant’s go-go drive for success; and the only problem with Chastain in this film is that she isn’t in it enough.
This is a chess-game kind of plot, where each move affects a dozen other moves. The pieces include not just politicians and goodfellas, but also truck drivers and salesmen. At the lower end of the food chain, Elyes Gabel and Catalina Sandino Moreno play a working-class couple directly damaged by all these machinations. In creating this dog-eat-dog world, Chandor doesn’t exactly make fresh observations. His first two films, Margin Call and All Is Lost, were more startling and original. But he does manage the game with dexterity, and the re-creation of a grungy era is completely convincing. On the latter point, Chandor is paying respect to a serious American moviemaking style employed 40 years ago by directors like Sidney Lumet and Francis Ford Coppola, in which a system’s structure is brought into the cold, hard light. Chandor’s update proves there’s plenty of material still cloaked in darkness.
film@seattleweekly.com
A MOST VIOLENT YEAR Opens Fri., Jan 23 at Guild 45th, Lincoln Square, and Meridian. Rated R. 125 minutes.
