Most Violent Year, A

Synopsis; Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) runs a small heating oil company that he took over from his father-in-law when he married Anna (Jessica Chastain). Abel has implacable ambition but he is dogged by two things  - unscrupulous rivals who are hijacking his trucks and scaring his employees and a D.A (David Oyelowo) who is investigating the industry and Abel’s business in particular.

J.C. Chandor burst onto the scene with his 2011 debut feature, Margin Call about Wall Street shenanigans. Although the writer-director picked up the Oscar for best original screenplay I thought the film somewhat over-rated. I was impressed, however, with his follow-up, All Is Lost which refers not, as you might think, to money but to maritime parlance for “we’re sunk” as Robert Redford prepared to enter Davey Jones’s Locker.

Despite its somewhat misleading title, with A Most Violent Year Chandor returns to matters financial and a story of an immigrant struggling tooth and nail to realize the American Dream.  It’s a familiar theme seen in many guises and Chandor's version is as much a stylistic homage as it is an urban folktale set in a specific place and time.

With its umbrageous tonalities, barely lit interiors (more money would have been spent on tea and coffee than electricity), shady figures meeting in barbershops and restaurants to strike deals, the setting might be 1981 but it looks more post-war America as envisioned by Coppola and Gordon Willis in The Godfather. The pace is bleakly measured and there’s lots of allusions to family, respect and the old ways and if that isn’t enough for you, Oscar Isaac’s Abel is perched firmly on the shoulders of Pacino’s Michael Corleone.

At least stylistically.  For whilst the dominant tone is that of the organized crime film the substance is a more modest story of a small entrepreneur  trying to succeed without sacrificing his principles, as if Michael decided not to whack Captain McCluskey but save the Corleone family business anyway.  

Rather than go down a road oft-travelled Chandor comes up with an original scenario. Abel might end up in the same place as Michael but the journey is engagingly different and that is commendable. The execution is intelligent without sacrificing any of the tension characteristic of the crime genre (a short truck chase is particularly well handled).  The financial dealings are as exciting as the criminal ones, with Abel’s wife a go-between two worlds which are each in their own way brutal  (Chastain’s Brooklyn moll could have come out of American Hustle).

For all that there’s a certain wooliness to the film that distracts.  For a start, heating oil is hardly something for which one feels much affinity. Not that I’ve ever known what the Corleones did for their money (the protection racket?) but Abel appears to have only two or three petrol tankers (we see more at the film's end) and the “industry” seems to be made up of grubby grifters. So the stakes don't seem high enough and there’s a bit of a mismatch between form and content. Thanks to cinematographer Bradford Young, Gordon Willis is all over this film but Coppola’s funereal gravitas is out of place.

There’s not really enough about the Abel character for us to identify with.  He’s both principled and tough and cool but how did he get that way? By coming up through the ranks?  Did he marry the boss’s daughter? Some more back-story would have helped.  There’s a sub-plot about Abel’s relationship with an old friend, Julian (Elyes Gabel) that is critical to the film’s thematic development but feels too schematic to be fulfilling.

Whilst Isaac is good in the lead, the lack of depth to his character is a somewhat disappointing aspect to what is otherwise an impressive genre film that has plenty to offer.

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