Abel Morales is a businessman who tries to do everything honestly. He has been building his business of fuel distribution to quite a big position. He now lands a deal to purchase a bay-front storage facility that will increase the business greatly. But this deal has a risky clause which states that if Abel fails to pay the rest of the due payment, the facility and the deposit will be gone. His trucks have been targeted by robbers from the last few months, which scared his drivers. He even gets an intimidation visit by burglars. Additionally, the DA wants to charges the business with felony counts. His wife suddenly reveals a gun she purchases for her protection, of which he strongly disagrees. Despite his disapproval, Abel's drivers arm themselves with guns but lack the permit for them. When another heist occurs and one of his driver fires shots, Abel has to go himself and find the missing driver to turn him to the police. The driver Julian is found, but he ran away when he's about to be turned in. Abel goes every where to get loans as the closure time nears.

From one of his competitors the Lefkowicz, Abel gets a deal for 500 thousand dollars or the 1.5 millions he needs. The facility owner grants him an extra three day time, in which he uses to see his brother to ask him to mortgage his apartment to help Abel. He also convenes all his other surrounding competitors saying that he knows at least one of them is in league with his trucks' hijackers. On his way home he accidentally finds one of his trucks being hijacked. He follows the truck through a chase. After capturing the robber he finds that one of his competitors has been buying the stolen fuel. When the money needed is only 600 thousand more, he runs out of time. But his wife suddenly pulls out a bank account with enough cash in it. To his surprise, his wife has been skimming money from the company all this time. Finally he decides to use the money and completes the deal. Julian comes to the facility; angry thinking that he gets nothing while Abel gets everything. Abel convinces him there's a second chance, but he commit suicide then and there. Abel then asks for a deal with the visiting DA for his business.

The story nicely encompasses the vigilant businessman character. It also depicts nicely all those pressure from every side that can eventually break someone's fortitude on principles. The character focus greatly emphasized on Abel, his vigilance on doing things straight, and his ways to inspire people around him to do the same. Ultimately we get to see how situation and circumstance can get the best of even a strongly principled man.

The drama part is nicely very strong despite all those suspenseful thriller parts coming in and out of the screen. The movie nicely puts a high level of anticipation on the audience about what kind of suspense the movie may bring, although if we think of it, the suspense this movie presents isn't really that strong. One thing that feels like a large plot hole is the side plot with the sales trainee; who did the family worked with to frame the kid?

The screenplay is nicely quite unpredictable and can shift almost instantaneously from the drama side to the thriller side with just a few scene or angle cuts. Thus the movie can maintain its steady mood of overall gloomy and dark. The constant depiction of winter snow weather really helps a lot in building this mood despite the use of quite bright lighting choice. The coloration of the movie also enables it to feel more authentic to the time frame.

I like how the acting overall is fairly good, although I wouldn't say that this movie holds any of the star cast's outstanding performance. Oscar Isaac handled the main focus role well enough by portraying the cool but strong businessman. Jessica Chastain provided the wife angle nicely and played well into the ending twist's critical point. David Oyelowo played quite nice here although it's really shown that maybe his concentration was more on Selma (2014) rather than this movie.

A mere 6 out of 10 is a deserving score I give to A Most Violent Year (2014). It's a good entertainment but it falls into the more serious type that I just don't give a recommendation to go see it in the movies. It may become too boring for some people.