07/09/2018 The storyline tells of a few facets of corruption within the fuel delivery/small oil company industry, mainly the small jobber home heat and fuel delivery. I too was in that industry from 1980 to 1985 in Southern New Jersey. The corruption given in this movie is mild, almost non existent by comparisson to the reality of the real oil business which includes, corrupt politics, under the table state contracts, organized crime involvement along and so on and so on, just to skim the criminal surface. Top to bottom, from major oil companies (the biggest/price at the pump fixers/collusion) down to a small business with maybe a few trucks on the road - a pure web of corruption! A good movie that only touches on the problems within the industry.

I really am a bit lost for words to describe how magnificent this movie is, because IMAGES are what makes this classic burn through my heart. Words are failing when images are so powerful as in "A Most Violent Year"... Seen it 5 times already since it's release and it is here to stay. Gets better with every viewing...It is not a big drama or thriller, it is the story of the struggle to build up an business empire, depicting the thin line between achieving succes and becoming complicit in violence. Oscar Isaac plays an upcoming oil distributor in New York back in the eighties, at a time when crime was running wild in the big apple. Married to a mob's daugther he still wants to walk the righteous path without using his wife's mob connections to make a succes of his oilbusiness. Will he succeed in being a honest businessman or will he cave in under pressure and use the mob to build up his new oil company?This movie became a classic at the very moment it was released. You just gotta see it to believe it. It is not the story that is monumental, the acting is though. The very best of Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain and Albert Brooks. The way this tale of succes and deceit is photographed and scored deserves nothing but praise. Eye and ear candy! The direction by J.C. Chandor builds up a tension that absorbs every second of film. Few directors are capable of creating such delicate, intense, contineous suspense. J.C Chandor's masterpiece.

A Most Violent Year is a gangster movie in which the protagonist is ironically trying not to be a gangster. Oscar Isaac played the lead part so well, and it's rare to identify with a character so much that you genuinely empathize with him. I thought the movie was based on a true story, but the only factual thing about it was that New York City had its highest crime rate in 1981. Another commendable film from the director of Margin Call.

. . . is the main take-away from A MOST VIOLENT YEAR. Even for folks who do not own a copy of BUSH CRIME FAMILY, which explains how Jeb Bush's grandpa--Prescott Bush--made World War Two possible by providing Hitler's Blitzkrieg with a crucial diesel fuel additive in the 1930s, the History of Oil is synonymous with the History of Violence, from 1880 to the Present. THERE WILL BE BLOOD, GIANT, and AMER!CAN SNIPER are just three of countless films documenting mayhem in the oil fields and in the Oil Wars. A MOST VIOLENT YEAR sets itself apart by focusing upon 18 deadly fuel oil truck hijackings, along with sundry kidnappings, beatings, and Acts of Terrorism which occurred around New York City in 1981. Oscar Isaacs plays "Abel," an adherent to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Non-violent Preachings. But Abel's no more able to defend himself against the Little Oil Industry thugs than millions of ordinary Americans have been in combating Big Oil's Fracking (which has brought coast-to-coast earthquakes into formerly quake-free zones, causing untold thousands of cracked home foundations and driveways, not to mention polluted drinking water aquifers). Like America itself, A MOST VIOLENT YEAR shows Abel being slowly roasted alive in a vat of boiling oil. It's the peaceful Abels of this world who are doomed to perish under Big OR Little Oil's Mark of Cain.