In the vein of the best poles, J. C. Chandor signs a movie as intelligent as attractive, centered on an entrepreneur. With Jessica Chastain in Lady Macbeth of the 1980s.
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At first, we would believe an armor. This coat in camel hair, clear, gilded almost, to the square shoulders, gives Abel moral the silhouette of a hero, which stands out clearly on the gray of the city, on the vilenie of his opponents. And then, as a violent Most violent Year, we will say that the coat was only a shell, an exoskeleton that pushed for this living being, fragile, complex, withstands the harm that he wants the world.
The very bright, very intelligent and very seductive third film by JC Chandor tells a simple story at first glance – a New York entrepreneur tries to succeed without renouncing its integrity – to better unveil the complexity of beings and society they form. Because the film is located in New York in 1981 (“the most violent year” of the title, the worst that the city is known in terms of crime), because Oscar Isaac, which holds the role of Abel Morals , is Al Pacino’s Ibero-American cousin, we can believe Sidney Luget’s Great Politico-Police Thrillers (1924-2011).
dazzling staged
But J. C. Chandor, is not really interested in politics, in the economy instead. His first feature film, Margin Call, staged the krach of a business bank in one night. Abel Morales sells domestic oil in the suburbs pavillonnaires of New York. To deliver it, it resorts to a fleet of trucks led by members of the Union of Roads (Teamsters), under a mafia influence. In this glacial winter, the content of the tanks is sometimes stolen by armed men who beat the drivers.
Abel is married to Anna (Jessica Chastain), a woman from a mafia family who could help him. The proposals of this 1980s Lady Macbeth fall into the ear of a deaf. His honesty proceeds from a purely economic calculation: the transgression seems to him more at risk than the observance of the laws. Oscar Isaac gives his character the courtesy a little steep a newcomer must adopt in the face of those who have already traveled the path he wants to borrow.
The dazzling staging is based on a scenario whose intelligence goes through precision, the thoroughness. When we have finished apprehending the mass of information distilled by J. C. Chandor and its actors, we find ourselves trapped, like Abel. In a new York lepers, veiled by a toxic haze, the hero in camel hair coat must make a decision. Two great throttle shots, two prosecutions, bringing it closer to this fateful moment. These two sequences are enough to inject enough adrenaline so that the film finds its place in the Great Thrillers Gallery New York.