A Most Violent Year is the American Dream as a 1980s nightmare
REVIEW: A Most Violent Year is an imposing urban crime drama, the kind that Paul Newman or Al Pacino would have starred in back in the day.
Leigh Paatsch
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A Most Violent Year (MA15+)
Director : J.C. Chandor (Margin Call)
Starring : Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, Albert Brooks, David Oyelowo.
Rating : ***1/2
Ordeal or no deal?
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Whenever the golden American dream is filtered through the movies, it can soon become a lead-lined nightmare.
A perfect example of this reverse alchemy is the imposing new urban crime drama A Most Violent Year, a story where getting ahead in life is no way to live.
The year is 1981. New York City is one of the most violent places in the free world. A place where a self-made man must become become a monster to stay in business.
An aspiring fuel-transport tycoon, Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), is looking to buck the trend by making every dollar earned an honest one.
However, with the clock rapidly counting down on a make-or-break deal, Abel’s crusade to remain clean is destined to drag those around him to some very dirty places indeed.
As the film begins, Abel has just 30 days to make a million-dollar-plus final payment on a sprawling storage facility on the outskirts of NYC.
Abel’s right-hand man, lawyer Andrew Walsh (Albert Brooks), has serious reservations about his client’s grand plans for expansion.
Their competitors are already hijacking trucks from the Morales fleet in broad daylight, stealing the fuel and leaving the vehicle’s badly beaten drivers for dead.
Once word gets out that Abel is betting his entire fortune on the storage deal going through, his enemies declare open war on his business. Abel’s bankers get the jitters and withdraw their support.
To make matters worse, a nosy district attorney (Selma’s David Oyelowo) is pursuing a tip-off that Abel’s head accountant has been cooking the books.
The identity of Abel’s main number cruncher? It is his wife Anna (Jessica Chastain), a hot-headed type not always inclined to follow her spouse’s honourable instincts.
Writer-director J.C. Chandor (Margin Call, All is Lost) expertly exposes a seedy underworld populated by low-lifes with no time for high-minded ethics.
Though Abel remains a fish-out-of-water throughout, Isaac plays him with a fascinating assurance that never gives the slightest hint of a gasp for air.
It is a performance of a composed calibre that we rarely see these days, calling on a gritty grace under pressure that was once the calling card of the likes of Paul Newman and Al Pacino in their respective primes.
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Originally published as A Most Violent Year is the American Dream as a 1980s nightmare
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