A Most Violent Year

Director: J. C. Chandor

2014 / 125min / DCP

In c. 1981 Greenpoint, Brooklyn would-be heating-oil magnate Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), seeing his bottom threatened by a rash of truck hijackings seemingly ordered by competitors, has to decide if he’s more afraid of escalating the violence through retribution or of facing the wrath of his wife (Jessica Chastain), who has the cunning ambition of an Outer Borough Lady Macbeth. A fable of immigrant entrepreneurial aspiration threatening to turn to moral rot that recalls the best of Sidney Lumet, with Young eschewing the visual clichés of “gritty” period NYC and instead capturing the cold, clean, hard-edged quality of the city’s winter light.