Considering that J.C. Chandor's film is called A Most Violent Year there is very little violence and the film is so slow the passage of time is undetectable.

It is New York City of the early 1980's, and the Manhattan of that time is a far cry from the wealthy bourgeois city of today. 1981 is the year of the film A Most Violent Year, in which the audience follows an ambitious self-made businessman as he tries to fight to maintain his business and protect his family. The year of 1981 is also the year the most violent crimes occurred ever in New York City and it was statistically at its most dangerous.

The Morales family owns one of the top oil transporters and distributors of New York City. The business used to belong to the father of Abel Morales's wife Anna, played by Jessica Chastain. The industry can be ruthless but Abel, Oscar Isaac, hopes to navigate the cutthroat capitalistic atmosphere by doing right by his moral code. His business is under siege from all angles when thieves begin targeting and stealing his oil trucks, he becomes the subject of three legal cases from an assistant district attorney and he is trying to close one of the riskiest financial maneuvers of his career.

J.C. Chandor writes and directs A Most Violent Year which blatantly rips off and tries to emulate other films with a similar plot. The idea for setting the film in NYC during the most dangerous and tumultuous year of the city for A Most Violent Year is intriguing and interesting. Yet the completed film lacks anything gritty or interesting to capitalize on said premise nor eludes to the city of New York in any way. The rest of the film is also just as ambiguous and undefined, and most of the plot progression seemingly occurs through the exposition of dialogue. Perhaps the ambiguity was deliberate in the hopes of being symbolically important and revealing, but instead is just dull.

The characters themselves are also played in a way that vividly brings to mind previous portrayals that were more successful. Oscar Isaac appears to be doing his best Al Pacino impression, especially every time he says the words 'my family' when he should be saying 'my business.' Jessica Chastain is the female archetype of any stronger female personality from any mob movie: think Sharon Stone in Casino but without the drug addiction and trashy back story or Talia Shire's Connie in The Godfather but with more participation in the business. Neither performances are unique or imaginative and with a plot as solemn and repetitive as the one in A Most Violent Year, are not redemptory.

Chandor can tell the audience that the film is happening in the most violent year, but in failing to show me he misses the most impactful aspect of the film. The brunt of action in A Most Violent Year happens in the last 30minutes, but that is only if you make it through the previous 90 minutes of tedium.

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