A Most Violent Year was a welcome movie that was just what you want sometimes at this stage of the Oscar-watching madness when I saw this in early February: simply a good movie. Good acting. Good story. Good entertainment. And an absence of heavy controversy. (Don’t get me wrong, you all know that I love a good, deep, thought-provoking movie. But I also like to watch the Sunday morning news shows. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy an episode of Big Bang Theory too.)
Jessica Chastain was wonderful, as she always is. Oscar Isaac, though, to me, was even more integral to the film. He brought us a completely different character than that in Inside Llewyn Davis. His character in this new film is complex and torn, and it’s that struggle and attempt to define and to climb and to justify that makes this movie so good.
As I watched, I was faced with defining what a crook is and how one thief can so easily justify his crime while judging and putting down others who steal and cheat. And as I watched, I smirked at the lines drawn by the characters in the film: who is he or she to decide just what crime is okay? What matters more, the victim? The cost to society? The loss of trust of one or many?
I don’t have those answers, and the movie certainly did not provide any. But it made me think. And I always like that in a movie.