A Most Violent Year

And Henchmen

(In the chaos of this week, I accidentally posted twice today. So, as a bonus, enjoy my 100th entry)

From what I understand, Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac are quite close, longtime friends. They were a couple in the HBO miniseries “Scenes From A Marriage”, and after he slaved away under the makeup for “X-Men: Apocalypse”, she appeared as a villain in “Dark Phoenix”. But despite some viral affection between the two via the red carpet, they’ve only been together in one movie, and that’s only after Javier Bardem stepped out of “A Most Violent Year”. If you like both actors, then you’ve got good taste, and in this film, you’re in for a delight.

I take a personal pleasure from a movie like this. As the film starts, the year is 1981, New York City. Yes, I was not alive, but this was the mileu of my father. He was an important man, and I was made privy to this during my childhood. For men like him, New York City was 1981 well into the Giuliani years. This is a movie of smoky rooms with men who make whispered handshake agreements. My father didn’t smoke, and didn’t have friends that did, but those rooms were eternally smoky. As a child, I’ve been in them, I visited them many times with my father. There are a few movies that have specialized in recerating this mood. I recall James Gray’s “We Own The Night” being the ultimate New York City Smoky Room movie, but this film certainly comes close.

Isaac plays Abel Morales, a trucking company owner facing a series of problems. The cops have begun to sniff around the company finances, a place where Morales has enjoyed the largesse without asking the necessary questions. But he’s also struggling with how to handle the rising crime of the era, manifesting in several of his trucks being hijacked on their route. He could handle the situation above board, but that would risk further scrutiny from the authorities. Or he can start to arm his drivers and begin to embark upon a shady criminal road.

It’s a character test of sorts, but immediately within the world of the movie, nothing seems right. Morales’ lawyer (an excellent, low-key Albert Brooks) is advising him on a questionable deal for an oil terminal. An ambitious DA (David Oyelowo) is playing good cop while trying to learn more about the company finances. The Mafia is sniffing around, knowing a desperate businessman who needs a boost when they see one. And then there’s fabulously-attired Anna (Chastain), who casts a glamorous shadow over his husband’s operations, while quietly running the numbers at home, a pair of glasses forever dangling off the bridge of her nose.

This is from J.C. Chandor, who makes Dude Movies about professional men who need to broker deals to survive. As his career has continued, he’s let these depictions extend into the physical world, building mature decisions into physical actions, allowing for a tactile depiction of nearly-fatal actions. It’s the nerviness that largely guided the Robert Redford lost-at-sea drama “All Is Lost”, and fuels the hope that his upcoming, obligatory venture into the world of Marvel, “Kraven The Hunter”, would be at its best during extended wordless sequences. We’ll see about that last one. In “Violent Year”, however, he’s got some interesting character actors as the panicked truck hijackers, sprinting out onto the highway to stop vehicles and pry the drivers safely away before getting hit by oncoming traffic. One of them, Christopher Abbott, somehow looks more over his head than usual, and he’s made a career out of playing guys constantly in over their heads.

Over his head is the impression you immediately get from Morales, so the movie simply becomes the sight of a vice tightening, more and more. If you enjoyed “Uncut Gems”, this is the less heart attack-y version of a similar scenario, a betting man who has no choice but to double down as the walls close in. It is not a surprise when he realizes there’s an armed man threateningly patrolling his property after dark, unseen and mysterious, his allegiance unsaid. It’s also not a surprise when Anna begins to bare her teeth, not only because her lifestyle and their child is threatened, but because she feels minimizing her contributions to the family is what led to these complications in the first place. Chastain is a co-lead in this movie, but it takes time for her to exert her influence on the narrative. When she does, it’s a reminder that she’s the highlight of an exceptionally-strong cast.

I mentioned Abbott before who, in a small role, brings dimension to a guy that is basically a henchman. I know henchmen. I lived with plenty of them. People forget that, while people who wish to commit a crime are, by nature, criminals, but just because you’re a criminal doesn’t mean you get caught. Many guys in low-security federal institutions are there because another criminal deemed them inessential, ratted them out, threw them to the mercy of the feds. They were henchmen, in other words, disposable, except that somehow they didn’t figure this out, and no one told them.

The bulk of federal convictions at a lower level involved drugs, and these operations were often conspiracies, as classified by the feds. So these were men in business with other men to move product across state lines. Now removed from these actions, these men are making deals with you, making arrangements with you. Sometimes it’s about a schedule in which you’d clean the living area. Sometimes it’s to sell items that can be stolen from the cafeteria. In each case, I could not work with these men. So many of them were loud, oblivious to their circumstances, and so completely lacking discipline as to separating themselves from their own stash. I couldn’t share a secret with them, couldn’t complete a transaction with them. Some of them genuinely didn’t know how to whisper. Visiting a federal prison comes with the expectation that there are some master criminals afoot. I never met them. It was just henchmen.

Next week, we’re doing five days of non-human leading characters!