If we presumably equates "violent" to "death", we are destined to be mislead by J.C. Chandor's third feature, A MOST VIOLENT YEAR, as we follow our poker-faced protagonist Abel Morales (Isaac), who has experienced a tough year with his oil company business in NYC 1981, negotiate his way with unscrupulous business competitors, a stalwart district DA Lawrence (Oyelowo), we assume in any certain moment he would start a killing spree in the Godfather style. This never happens, since the dogma of Abel's action is that he will never do anything to jeopardise his business, which means he will never act like a gangster, he is not a felon (as he tells Lawrence in the coda), although Chandor manifestly imbues his crime-tale with a solemn layout and vintage colour pattern under the heavy influence of Francis Ford Coppola's gangster school, not to mention Isaac is obviously channelling Al Pacino's Michael Corleone but in a no-violence policy.

Abel is an ambitious, principled man, and quoted by his wife Anna (Chastain), he has never let his ego go in the way of his business decisions, the 2-hour film patiently recounts the entire process of how he manage to collect enough money to buy a property which will profitably expand his trade, with many hurdles in between. The most ruinous one is the fact that his oil trucks have been continuously mugged by two unknown criminals, which massively hurts the morale among his truck drivers, and due to Abel's refusal of equipping them with arms for protection (for fear that the action will drag himself into lawsuits), one young driver Julian (Gabel), who has being attacked once, gets an unlicensed gun and with bad luck, the same thing happens again, and this time he shoots for self-defence, but flees the scene and hides away. Meanwhile, Abel's company is under investigation by Lawrence, and soon the bank will rescind their loan due to all the investigations inflicted on the company, so Abel only has several days to find 1.5 million dollars to finish his deal of the expansion.

So one key question here is whether Abel sticks to perform is a completely legitimate enterprise or there is a discount of the term "legitimate", which means as long as it cannot be traced back to him and his company, he can condone it, as the economic crimes Anna commits during all the years. In the end, Abel chooses the latter, he starts as a hero audience is rooting for, but in the final confrontation with Julian, his moral backbone crumbles and his true colour unveils. Chandor leerily argues that a moral decadence is de rigueur for a big player like Abel, for whom a promising political career in the offing.

Oscar Isaac shines through with astonishing gravitas to portray such a complex character, unassuming but transfixing to behold, one of the best among his peers for a less showier flair. Jessica Chastain, handles the dramatic face-off with her consistently strong presence to indicate she is not merely a trophy blonde, but the script doesn't leave her enough substantially show-stopping fodder to capitalise on. After all, the film is made by dab hands of craftsmanship, sometimes, it borders on tedium, but I have a bone to pick with the script, the subplot of Julian is quite baffling to comprehend (his side of story never being fully elucidated before his final wretchedness), his tragedy as an expendable pawn never achieves its pathos one might expect, and there are also some loose ends such as who is behind the assault of the poor sales guy (Rosenfield) just in the doorstep of his clients' house and who is the burglar left a gun in Abel's house in the night?