A Most Violent Year is a 2015 drama about an ambitious immigrant who fights to protect his business and family during the most dangerous year in the city’s history.
I’m going to write two words down and give you a second or so to come up with some ways a big time Hollywood producer might make a full length movie about them be the slightest bit interesting. Ready? Here you go: Heating Oil.
Not exactly the stuff of top-drawer thrillers or head-scratching mysteries. No one is standing around the proverbial water cooler excitedly chatting about movies where the heroes fight about how we heat our homes in the winter. And yet, here we are. Writer and director J.C. Chandor puts heating oil right at the center of his 2015 crime drama and actually makes it more than interesting. It’s downright thrilling.
It’s 1981, New York City. Times are tight and tough, NYC having one of the worst years in history in terms of crime and violence. With winter setting in, the economy failing, and people unable to pay for heat, heating oil companies are transporting an increasingly valuable commodity and at greater risk. Why? Well Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), the owner of a fast-growing company called Standard Oil Company, will tell you. His drivers are getting hijacked, some beaten as armed men steal the trucks. Worse, he’s under investigation from the Assistant District Attorney Lawrence (David Oyelowo) for what he claims is price fixing and tax evasion. Now he’s got two fights on his hand, and those around him have some very particular ideas for how to handle them both.
There’s a lot more at play behind the scenes for Abel, who has made a deal with Hasidic Jews, who own land with a fuel oil terminal on the East River, which would give Standard a huge edge, but with his company losing trucks and a the investigation weighing heavy, things are closing in around him. His wife is Anna (Jessica Chastain), the daughter of the man Abel bought the company from, is all for a more blunt approach to handling the hijacking. She want’s arm the drivers, something Abel’s attorney, Andrew Walsh (Albert Brooks) has begun brokering with someone who can get that done. But what is right?
Chandler, whose most recent film Triple Frontier – a movie I greatly enjoyed and also currently streaming on Netflix – revels in his dialogue, building suspense through long, deliberately-paced exchanges that round out these characters in delicious ways, with the mounting conflict between Abel and Anna dividing them on one front while cementing them on another. It’s a terrific setup that gives the two actors a wide arena to play in, with several tense moments built around these mounting problems.
Chastain is, as always, captivating, donning a platinum blonde 80s hairdo and (Armani) fashion as she embodies a kind of matriarchal overseer on the whole thing, delivering real punch as she gives Anna far more presence in the story than movies like tend to give women. She’s matched by Isaac, who is one of those actors who is always easy to ‘see’ as himself yet able to convince in a crop of diverse roles. I like him here a lot, playing into the more conventional tropes of the big money boss, struggling to do what he thinks is right in protecting his family and business while getting cornered from all side.
Brooks, who is almost unrecognizable, does well too, always at Abel’s side, the legendary actor continuing to slip into more dramatic roles with ease, making his time on screen great fun to watch. Oyelowo is well used but in a thankless role, filling in all the holes his part requires, even as he does so with gusto.
A Most Violent Year captures the era very well, the film adopting a look and feel of many classic movies of the early 1980s with a gritty street feel that is unpolished and messy, made all the better by the grey dull of the winter. This isn’t an action movie, despite the veiled promise of the title, the story more about the threat of it than the delivery of it, even as a few moments make good on the expectation.
What’s most interesting about A Most Violent Year is how much tension it builds with what would seem so little. From sales calls to stops at a toll booth, the film constantly dials up the suspense as Abel fights for control of his growing empire. Yet you wonder what choice does he have? This is a smart story with a string of tough questions at its dark core. Highly recommended.