J.C. Chandor in three films has proved himself a truly versatile filmmaker. Margin Call - All is Lost - now with A Most Violent Year, the three don't seem much alike (a wall street drama about the financial collapse; a man stuck in the ocean at his wits end; a man trying to hold on to his crumbling business). But they are all about a similar thread, which is men trying to stay alive the only way they know how. Trading the large ensemble of Margin Call to the one-man-band approach of Lost, we now come to a middle ground of a small group of characters, and they're always compelling to watch. I should say, in correction partly, the lead character Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), who in the course of a couple of weeks sees everything he has starting to crumble: a new business venture he's been working for years to get (a major piece of waterfront property), indictments pending (good old investigator with his own political side played by David Owoyelo), and problems with his oil-truck drivers being hijacked and beaten. Oh, and his wife. Jessica Chastain. Wow.

The whole movie can be summed up with 'wow'. But the title is a little deceptive for those who are rushing to see it out of the thought it's got a lot of what it entails. Not really. This is violent in the way that Lumet's Prince of the City or one of his gritty New York city thrillers were: it's mostly people talking, trying to be calm, trying to rationalize, and yet there's always the sense that something sinister is at work, of a paranoia with the criminal elements at play.

What makes it so engrossing for me is the consequences, the stakes for this character of Abel. He is not someone easily pushed around, but he's not a nasty, bad man. At the least he doesn't see himself that way and doesn't carry that kind of thuggish criminal weight. He's a businessman, a family man, running it with his wife running the accounting controls (which is a whole other kettle of fish, of course).

But you can only care about this character inasmuch as how the actor inhabits him, and Isaac gets completely under this guy's skin. He has a charm though, which is unexpected and just right. It may be hard to see as the man, through much of 'Violent Year', is under stress and pressure, trying to keep his calm and only getting outbursts around his wife and those he just can't control anymore. Even with his employee, the driver, who is also in his own bind following an incident with guns on a highway, he keeps that eye-contact (his character has a whole scene, probably the one where the audience can most connect with him, where he talks about the eye contact), and you believe where he's coming from. No BS. And Isaac makes this guy the real deal.

It's the story of the sympathetic gangster, in other words. Or is he a gangster? He wouldn't see himself as that, despite the home he lives in or the money that may/may not be legit, the heat from the law, the connection through his father in law (we only hear briefly about this, but it's just enough to paint the picture). But Isaac makes this conflict palpable and hard not to connect with, especially as every moment you wonder 'could this be it, the person around the corner going to get him?' Maybe that's what the title refers to: the idea of violence and mayhem all around someone trying to be the eye of the storm, the calm. "I'm only afraid of failure," he says at one point, and it would be one of those cliché platitudes, but he means it. So, too, do his adviser (Albert Brooks, nigh unrecognizable at first in the best way for an actor, who also carries a level of calm and control, though the violence is underneath there too), and his wife.

Together Isaac and Chastain, to make one of those critical tropes, light up the screen. And it's such a dark movie that it sounds ridiculous, but they work incredibly well together, lifting up an already superb script by Chandor. One might wonder for a split second why the story starts right here, that we don't get to see much of what's happened in the 70's when they build up this (shady?) business. No need. It's all their in their looks, the way they talk to each other, the tense exchanges around a loaded gun discovered on their front lawn, or missing money or just the general state of things. But, ultimately, the actors play it that they only have each other now, and they better be able to put up or shut up. It's characters with immense internal and external conflicts, and players who latch on to them like barnacles to an ocean floor.

And the direction is slick and powerful while not having to "do" much, which also goes back to Lumet. Doing just what's needed for the scenes is fine, and sometimes, usually, Chandor goes a little further and it works perfectly. In other words, this is a coolly directed film, and it's just what the material requires. When a chase happens, it's a rush. When characters have to talk and square things off, the faces can say so much more, but paced so that there's time to take in the words. It's elegant and thoughtful filmmaking at a time when so many thrillers and even dramas rush things from moment and moment and beat to beat. By the time you get to the end, you feel like you've been on a journey through the depths of survival. Like his other films, only, this time somehow, better.