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Review: 'A Most Violent Year' a tense, urban noir

 
Oscar Issac plays Abel Morales, an immigrant whose heating oil company has been targeted by criminals, and Jessica Chastain is his wife, Anna, in A Most Violent Year.
Oscar Issac plays Abel Morales, an immigrant whose heating oil company has been targeted by criminals, and Jessica Chastain is his wife, Anna, in A Most Violent Year.
Published Jan. 27, 2015

J.C. Chandor's crime drama A Most Violent Year is set in Sidney Lumet's New York, at the dicey intersection of just business and making ends meet. Set in 1981, coincidentally the year Lumet made Prince of the City, Chandor channels that kind of subtle tension and shady deals into a unique scheme.

Caught in a jam is Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), a heating oil entrepreneur striking a deal with the Hasidic owners of waterfront storage property that can make him very powerful, in an industry run by crooks. Abel carries the immigrant's dream of fairness paying off, which isn't smart. As a mobster's daughter, Abel's wife Anna (Golden Globe nominee Jessica Chastain) knows as much.

Abel already sank their fortune into a down payment. Needing to raise $1.5 million in 30 days to close the deal, Abel is also plagued by increasingly violent hijackings of his oil trucks. Any of Abel's competitors could be behind them. Abel's bankers and his lawyer (a nicely understated Albert Brooks) are getting nervous, while Anna has her own ideas of how to handle the situation.

Meanwhile, heating oil industry practices are being investigated by a crafty district attorney (David Oyelowo, Selma). Anyone Abel approaches for a loan wants a chunk of the action (except one, which nonetheless shows the depths of his desperation). Chandor's screenplay is as sprawling as his nearly wordless All is Lost was sparse, and like his earlier Boiler Room, can get thematically dense at times. Period details are on the mark yet it's surprising that the National Board of Review cited A Most Violent Year as 2014's best film.

With this performance, Isaac displays another shade of undeniable charisma, after the prickly magnetism of Inside Llewyn Davis. Abel's criminal conflict is right in line with several Lumet heroes, notably Serpico for Isaac's resemblance to Al Pacino. A Most Violent Year has its share of wham-bam moments — a car-truck-foot chase into the city's bowels is superb — but the action never speaks louder than Chandor's hard-boiled words.

Contact Steve Persall at spersall@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8365. Follow @StevePersall on Twitter.