When you're playing poker and you think you're holding cards that are better than the other players, you raise the stakes. Well, in the poker game that is movie awards season, releasing a movie at the very end of the year is a sign that a studio thinks it has a very strong film on its hands. They're betting that those who nominate films and actors for awards will agree. Often, the gamble pays off. Sometimes it doesn't. Such is the situation in which the producers of "A Most Violent Year" (R, 2:05) found themselves. The film received no Oscar nominations, one Golden Globe nomination and that's about it. There are a number of good reasons for the snubs, if you can call them that.

The film centers around Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), the owner of a heating oil supply company in New York City in 1981, which happens to have been one of the worst years for violent crime in the city's history. Abel (pronounced ah-BELL) is dealing with a rash of hijackings of his trucks by unknown thugs who steal the oil and abandon the trucks. He's also trying to raise enough money to close on a neighboring property which will allow him to expand his business. Abel has used all of his company's available cash as a down payment and has 30 days to pay the balance or he loses his deposit. He's counting on his bank to loan him the rest of the money, but an investigation of his company's business practices by Assistant District Attorney Lawrence (David Oyelowo) and the ongoing problem of the fuel oil thefts is putting the entire future of his business in jeopardy.

Abel has a lot on his plate and the people closest to him sometimes seem to be working against him. His wife (Jessica Chastain) berates Abel for not doing more to protect his family, especially after he chases off a would-be intruder from his front porch and doesn't seem to have a plan to deal with the situation when his youngest daughter finds the thug's gun in the bushes. The local Teamsters leader (Peter Gerety) insists that his drivers be allowed to arm themselves for self-defense. Abel objects, for fear of what that might lead to, but Abel's lawyer (Albert Brooks) sides with the Teamsters. The fact that Abel is a decent and honest man in such a tough business makes meeting all these challenges all the more difficult.

"A Most Violent Year" has a number of problems, starting with false advertising. The film's title and its theatrical trailer lead one to believe that this is a violent movie. Newscasts heard in the background of several scenes and a conversation or two remind us that this was a violent year for the city, but the movie is actually not very violent at all. Not only does all this misrepresent the film's story, but the movie's relative lack of violence seems counterintuitive when you think about what's going on in the story.

The performances of Isaac and Chastain were excellent, but they are overshadowed by the ineptness of their characters, especially Isaac's. Abel is dangerously naïve regarding the seriousness of the situations he and his family face and maddeningly unable to do much about his problems. He dresses, talks and carries himself like he belongs in one of the "Godfather" films, but underneath it all, he comes across more like a castrated Michael Corleone. I'm all for seeing an underdog triumph in a movie, or seeing a character's honesty and hard work pay off, but Abel is the kind of guy who stubbornly insists on bringing a knife to a gun fight. How a man like Abel succeeded as long as he had when the movie began or how he might hope to survive in his kind of world is a mystery, almost as much of a mystery as how this film's producers thought it deserved to be taken seriously as an awards contender. Sorry, folks. It looks like what you're holding here is no better than a pair of twos, a pair for threes and a joker. For that hand, all you'll get from me is a "C".