A Most Violent Year (2014)

[zomgmouse]

Saw this yesterday. Very impressed by how understated it all was. I haven't seen any of the director's other films but was heartened to see he wrote and directed. The acting in this was great and the themes played out without being forced upon the audience. Who else has seen this?

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

I have. JC Chandor previously directed All Is Lost, the Robert Redford nearly mute film where he's alone on a boat slowly sinking in the middle of the ocean.

A Most Violent Year is very interesting as it takes the other road compared to nearly every gangster film depicting the era. I guess it's much more accurate when it depicts how a real person, as opposed to a character, could react in such a situation.

For the record, Oscar Isaac was cast at the very last minute, after Javier Bardem dropped out of the project, but you wouldn't know by his performance.

[Talulah, really!]

You certainly wouldn't, I struggle to even imagine it with Javier Bardem. It's one of the many enjoyable things about the film, the first rate performances by two of the most electrifying actors to emerge in the last few years (to think that only five years ago Jessica Chastain was appearing in Poirot).

A Most Violent Year is very interesting as it takes the other road compared to nearly every gangster film depicting the era. I guess it's much more accurate when it depicts how a real person, as opposed to a character, could react in such a situation.

Think this gets at the reason why to me this is merely a good film as opposed to a truly great one like the obvious predecessors that hangover it like The Godfather and The French Connection, it has something of the more documentary pseudo-realism of modern television and film than those films did, the details are more specific at the expense of blanker canvas of the mythic. It is much clearer exactly how those operations work, what problems arise in trying to build an oil supply business. Compare the film and television version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the film goes to great pains to try and create a  "believable" environment of what an 1970s spy agency would look like, the TV version just has some actors around a table in a room. The Godfather is an eternal version of the dilemma of destiny and temptation, A Most Violent Year is a poignant tale about one particular man in a precise place at a particular point in time.

Certainly it is a well made, intelligent adult drama, beautifully shot, crisp and clean, the performances are excellent, the characters have a fullness, Jessica Chastain isn't just a chilly one note Lady Macbeth (she has my favourite bit of the film, where at the tense climax, her character is clearly struggling to keep her balance on the snow, a lovely parting shot of verisimilitude), the world the characters operate in is presented in depth and it has good direction. It's a fine film possibly a little overlooked as the basic premise and influences are too over familiar to critics for them to give it the good worth of mouth to push it further forward, I felt the Tom Hardy film The Drop was similarly neglected. Both quite downbeat as well of course.

[wooders1978]

Just watched - I liked it, I am going to buck the trend and reckon this would have been loads better with Bardem (you heard the joke about him in the pub? One of my faves) though the lead guy played a great wise guy, but I felt he was a little too 80's gangsterish

Apart from that:-
Christ, how awful is the song played over the credits?