Some films want so very bad to be prestigious.
It should be relatively easy. Get yourself a nice, deep in December release date. Some heavy material soaking with gravitas that demands some shedding of at least a half a bucket of tears. Assemble a group of A-Listers that are inclined to such fodder and hope for gold.
Many times it works out and you get movies that transcend the Hollywood Fast Food assembly line. These films can touch a part of humanity and examine it, try to explain it or merely sit in awe of it. These movies are not contractually obligated to have a superhero in them (although sometimes they do- see Birdman). These movies usually win the awards and can even, sometimes, can be described as Cinema.
Then there are the ones that come up short. They align all the elements but miss something along the way and fall well short of prestigious and become more pretentious than anything else. I’d rather watch Dumb and Dumber To than one of these films because at least DDTo knows what it is and what it is not.
As you may have guessed by now, A Most Violent Year falls under the latter category of pretentious Award bait that amounts to nearly nothing. A boring film that could have just as easily been titled A Very Complicated Commercial Real Estate Transaction.
Good cast but they lend nothing. Oscar Isaac plays a Abel Morales with an energy that is either channeling Pacino from the early 90’s or Stevie Van Zandt from The Sopranos. He is a gifted actor, no doubting, and his Llewyn Davis was one of my favorite performances last year. Here is prances and growls through the film.
Jessica Chastain also needs to try a little harder. She pulls off her normal strong female role here but is just going through the steps, not missing any of the choreography but forgetting to add any soul. In fact the entire production feels empty and SPOILER ALERT: nothing much happens.