Very much an attempt to shoot a sitcom as if it were Shakespeare. The plot revolves around a heating-oil executive's attempts to maintain an ethical attitude in the face of nasty competition and the pressures of ambition. The premise could become a worthy exploration of human nature if it were written and directed by David Mamet (think Glengarry Glen Ross). In the hands of J.C. Chandor, it turns into 125 grueling minutes of mood and mannerism without substance. The screenplay is flat and has more loose ends than the awful hairdo they have burdened poor Jessica Chastain with. (She is the only good thing in the picture, by the way.) The characters are uniformly stiff and one- dimensional, parading through a tired range of racial stereotypes and NYC-movie clichés: the politically ambitious African-American DA, the emotionally unstable Latino youth, the orthodox Jewish businessman with a heart of gold, and so on. By far the worst part is the main character, played by Oscar Isaac. It is hard to say if he was directed to do a bad impression of Al Pacino in the Godfather or if this was his own clever idea. Either way, it's excruciating to watch him trying to lend gravitas to lines so banal they could come out of a Brady Bunch movie. Awful screenplay, hiding behind camera and music that try desperately to induce you to lend some sort of emotional weight to what is actually a boring exercise in form and genre. Mr. Chandor should be barred from making films until he apologizes for this.