The mobster movie gets a disquieting remake under in A Most Violent Year, J.C. Chandor’s tale of a decent heating oil baron trying to keep it legit in early 80s Manhattan. It’s the same year the city suffered its worst violence in its history, and businessman Abel Morales [Oscar Isaac] is getting his fair whack of the crime wave, as the shadowy competition tries to sabotage his business. His trucks are hijacked, his door-to-door reps kidnapped and dumped outside the city. There’s someone lurking with a gun outside the door of his new sprawling Westchester County house.
Sharing Abel’s load is his mobbed up wife, Anna, all streetwise glamour in mink, excellently played by Jessica Chastain. She’s quicker than her husband to think about taking up a gun to protect the family and the family business. In a neat reversal of gangster movie trope: it’s the husband who finds himself married to the mob as Anna’s family past has taught her a few criminal tricks of her own.
Subversion and reversal are tricks well used by Chandor across A Most Violent Year. It’s the threat of violence that keeps the film burning on a low heat, against a magnificently bleached out Manhattan skyline. In one pivotal restaurant scene, it’s the expectation of a shoot out like the mobster films of old that ratchets up the tension; a tension J.C. Chandor exploits and then subverts.
A Most Violent Year is out 23rd January
Credits
Text Colin Crummy