Review of A Most Violent Year (2014) by Mo-Jai M — 24 Jan 2015

Sumptuous, sprawling and seductive: A Most Violent Year is nothing if not cinematically magisterial. JC Chandor's period piece is, equally thankfully, narratively ambitious too. Set during the titular year of 1981, the most statistically violent year in New York City history, isn't really about violence at all: if anything, it's a morality tale of a relatively honourable man trying not to plummet to the depths of being a gangster.

Save for a few bits of violence (and a spectacularly orchestrated chase scene on the bridge), Chandor lets the film develop at its own assured pace, with an undeniably unremarkable business transaction at its core, driving the film forward.

Boring? Not in the slightest. Just shy of 2 hours, this film is undoubtedly riveting throughout, thanks largely to the stunning cinematography managing to embody an unflinching but beautiful New York in 1981 and also the performances contained inside this movie.

Both Isaac and Chastain give inevitably powerful performances, with the former lending complexity to Abel whilst the latter gives a formidable but vulnerable turn as she continues to excel (after her standout performance amongst a galaxy of inadequate performances in Interstellar).

Oyelowo is not given much to do besides stand in front of the sprawling beauty behind him, though he does get the slightly over-egged final line of a film that strays from sentimentality right until the close.

I will forgive it, though, because this is a lusciously shot period piece not stuck on its period's quirks.