‘A Most Violent Year’
Grade: A
There is a moment during “A Most Violent Year” in which Abel Morales is standing on the edge of a pier with his lawyer, discussing the acquisition on which Abel is working. His lawyer keeps wondering what truly motivates Abel to keep expanding.
“I mean, have you ever thought why you want it so badly?” the lawyer asks.
Abel never really answers the question, but that concept of Morales’ motivation frames an interesting look into a fascinating character in a well-done film.
Abel Morales is a relatively young immigrant who has worked his way up from a lowly truck driver to the owner of an ever-growing oil company in 1981, one of the most violent years in New York City history.
Writer and director J.C. Chandor puts together beautiful scenery to display such a captivating character as Abel, played by the remarkable Oscar Isaac.
Abel is Michael Corleone without the bloodshed. He is a smart, stoic man who refuses to resort to crime to succeed, like many of his competitors have been doing in order to derail Abel’s business.
He isn’t Atticus Finch telling tales of morality. He simply understands these actions would take away from the admirable accomplishments he has accumulated.
When a young truck driver who Abel took a special interest in gets himself into trouble with the law, he asks Abel if he ever gets scared. He asks what he does when he becomes scared.
“I have always been much more scared of failure than anything else,” Abel said.
That could be the answer to the lawyer’s earlier question about why Abel operates the way he does. He sees that acting corruptly and breaking the law might make things far easier in the short term, but that it could easily cost him far more.
Abel’s wife, a gangster’s daughter played by Jessica Chastain, is the one in the family who is prepared to pull the trigger. She’s the one who shoots a deer to put him out of his misery while Abel stood timidly looking at the animal he just hit with his car.
She wants Abel to cut some corners and be more aggressive in order to solve some of the business’s issues. Abel doesn’t want to fail, and he sees that arming drivers and robbing trucks could lead to failure.
The beauty of this plot is the slow boil that presents Abel with opportunity after opportunity to solve his problems with easy ?way out.
I will not spoil whether he takes any of these chances, but I will say that Abel is a refreshing character who is strong and tough in a way that shows or movies don’t often enough display.
I once heard someone say great crime films look at crime as a microcosm of society. That could not be more true in “A Most ?Violent Year.”
It shows the way in which the everyday working man has pressure coming at all angles and has to attempt to do the right thing and still provide for his family.
Abel is a man who does not have to kill or steal to show how tough he is. His toughness is in the way he endures every brutal bump in the road in this movie without losing it. He does not buckle or give up or take the easy road. Abel continues to work and scheme to find a way to come out of his situation on top.
Just like the father who loses his job and has to keep going for his family. Just like the single mother who has to handle both roles of parenting.
“A Most Violent Year” is the tale of the American dream and the American nightmare. Abel is an example of how the dream worked out through hard work and doing the right thing. The truck driver who gets into trouble, a fellow immigrant, is the frightening example of how badly things can go in the quest for that dream.
Not all of Abel’s successes are through being the moral businessman, as his wife points out late in the movie. A lot of it is luck. Some of it is his wife making the tough choices he refuses to make. This film is not a black-and-white portrayal of right ?and wrong.
But at the end of the movie, Abel goes to put a piece of paper in the hole of an oil tank that had just had a bullet shot through it.
Because that’s what Abel does — he handles the holes that pop up in his life.
