A Most Violent Year

A Most Violent Year is hands down the best movie ever made about corruption in the heating oil business. That’s what I told the studio rep when I first saw it back in the days when the film’s distributor had Oscars dazzling their eyes — and was making sure every critic with a byline had a chance to see it on the big screen. Now, dreams of Oscars have gone, and the film is contenting itself with mostly good reviews, a Golden Globe nomination that didn’t bear fruit and being named best film of year by the National Board of Review — and no one has a clue who they are, except that they’ve been around for a very long time and have an impressive sounding name. (Hell, I used to write for their magazine, Films in Review, and I never knew who they were.) And after all that — it’s still the best movie ever made about corruption in the heating oil business.

I don’t mean to be dismissive of J.C. Chandor’s film. It’s a good movie — and certainly superior to his All Is Lost (2013), with its stunt of consisting of nothing but Robert Redford being “alone, all, all alone on a wide wide sea” on a sinking boat for 100 minutes. And though it’s not as good as his first movie, Margin Call (2011), it’s a game try. The problem is that it tries too hard. It tries too hard to be a great movie. And it tries too hard to be the new Godfather — in fact, it has a pretty bad case of Godfather envy, but it lacks that kind of scope. Imagine if the Corleones’ empire was a chain of convenience stores, and you’ll get the idea.

Oscar Isaac stars as Abel Morales — a first generation American with hair that’s supposed to make him look like Pacino in The Godfather but makes him look like he’d be more at home sitting on a beach next to Annette Funicello. He’s made a good business in heating oil, married Anna (Jessica Chastain) — a mobster’s daughter, no less — and has acquired a nice (if soulless) house for his family. But he wants more — he wants to become the name in heating oil by purchasing waterfront property with tanks for holding large amounts of oil. There are some problems, however. He has to borrow the cash, his associates — and even the man selling him the property — question his judgment, and he’s scrupulously honest. Or so he thinks, which is why he can’t understand why an assistant DA (David Oyelowo) is investigating him. He has another problem in that his trucks are being hijacked, and his oil is being stolen. Things will get even worse before it’s over.

This is all a reasonably good mix for a crime drama. But the film — much like its lead character — rarely flares into life. There are a couple of terrific chase scenes, but they’re more the exception than the rule — in large part because Abel Morales is just too upright to get down and dirty. Despite its title — which refers to the year 1981, supposedly New York’s worst for violent crime — this is just not a very violent movie. It wants to talk more than it wants to show, and the talk here has little of the zing found in Margin Call.

At the same time, A Most Violent Year remains generally compelling as entertainment of a more subdued kind. The attention to detail — like the dealings with the Othodox Jew property holders that exclude Anna, despite the fact that she has to sign — makes it feel authentic. Some of the plot contrivances — especially those concerning a Spanish immigrant driver (Elyes Gabel) — are hard to take seriously, and the abrupt ending is shock for shock’s sake. But the film livens up considerably whenever Chastain is onscreen, which is very much in its favor. Similarly, the idea of a defiantly honest businessman in a corrupt business who learns that maybe it wasn’t all hard work that got him where he is makes for good drama — though it all seems more cerebral than visceral. It’s certainly worth seeing — if only because it’s a mostly intelligent film — but it’d be as well to scale back your expectations a bit. Rated R for language and some violence.