Directed by JC Chandor
Starring Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo, Albert Brooks
It’s actually A Most Violent Week Or So if we’re being pedantic, but title accuracy is not the biggest problem that JC Chandor’s drab period tale of corruption in the heating oil business has to contend with.
It’s New York City, 1981, and ambitious fuel oil company honcho Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) has taken a gamble on buying a riverside storage facility that should give him a considerable edge over his competitors. Unfortunately, a corruption investigation by Assistant District Attorney Lawrence (David Oyelowo) puts off his financiers, and his oil delivery trucks are being targeted by hijackers who may in the employ of his rivals. Abel considers himself an honourable man, but will he remain steadfast in the face of the incredible obstacles arrayed against him?
JC Chandor (Margin Call, All Is Lost) certainly isn’t the only young director enamoured of the narrative and visual aesthetics of 1970s American cinema, but unlike, say, David O. Russell (American Hustle) or Paul Thomas Anderson (Inherent Vice, Boogie Nights), he insists that we treat his work here with the utmost seriousness. The problem is that, for all its formal elegance and dour, stone-faced moodiness, A Most Violent Year is still a pastiche – it’s just a fairly joyless one.
It’s also something of a faltering step from a filmmaker who has previously excelled at taking his audience into obscure territory – be it high-level investment and trading or solo yachting – and making those milieus not just accessible but fascinating. Here, though, he plays his cards too close to his chest, obfuscating both the parameters of Abel’s struggle and the stakes on the table. Even the role and relationship of vital characters is veiled here – time and again we’re introduced to players free of context and forced to parse who they are and what they want with few cues to draw on.
Chandor has assembled a fine cast, with Jessica Chastain doing good work as Anna, Abel’s wife, who takes a more pragmatic and ruthless approach to the matters at hand, and the always reliable Albert Brooks cropping up as Abel’s lawyer, plus Alessandro Nivola as a rival oil supplier. There’s joy to be drawn from the fine performances and painterly cinematography, but at the end of the day that’s not enough to justify such a punishing slog.
A Most Violent Year wants to be important – instead, it’s just self-important. While there are elements present worthy of admiration, as a whole it’s just too pompous to be taken seriously.
TRAVIS JOHNSON
