A MOST VIOLENT YEAR (US/United Arab Emirates - 2014) Written and directed by J.C. Chandor. Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo, Albert Brooks, Alessandro Nivola, Elyes Gabel, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Peter Gerety, Christopher Abbott, Ashley Williams, Jerry Adler, Elizabeth Marvel, David Margulies, Glenn Fleshler, John Procaccino, Robert Clohessy, Annie Funke. (R, 125 mins)
If you were to walk into J.C. Chandor's A MOST VIOLENT YEAR blind, knowing nothing about it, you might very well think it's a lost Sidney Lumet "gritty NYC" movie that's been on the shelf since 1981. In the course of just three films since 2011--he previously wrote and directed the mesmerizing financial meltdown chronicle MARGIN CALL and the Robert Redford lost-at-sea survivalist drama ALL IS LOST--Chandor has established himself as arguably the most versatile young talent in American filmmaking. With A MOST VIOLENT YEAR, Chandor wears his love of Lumet and a bygone era of NYC filmmaking on his sleeve. Set in the winter of 1981 during a record wave of violent crime, A MOST VIOLENT YEAR crackles with the kind of energy and intensity you just don't see much of these days. This is a movie for people who like big-city corruption dramas of the 1970s and early 1980s. Chandor's attention to detail is sharp and precise, and he lets the atmosphere, characterization, and performances convey the era rather than resorting to the easy, go-to tropes of garish clothing or the popular music of the period, which usually means a scene in a disco where Blondie's "Heart of Glass" is playing, or making the whole film play like the coked-up paranoia section of GOODFELLAS, which only works if you're AMERICAN HUSTLE. The problem with many of today's films that are set in the 1970s and 1980s is that they overdo the easy signifiers like hairstyles, clothing, and music. Chandor doesn't even break out those crutches, and instead approaches A MOST WANTED YEAR from a you-are-there 1981 perspective devoid of any sense of nostalgia. It's as if he's possessed by the spirit of the late, legendary Lumet.
In a performance that channels the best of the youthful Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, Oscar Isaac (INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS) is Abel Morales, the president of the relatively small-time Standard Heating Oil. Abel has several rivals throughout the Five Boroughs, and they're all jockeying for better positions in the local market. Abel and his business partner/wife Anna (Jessica Chastain) have dumped their life savings into a deposit on a riverfront land purchase from Hasidic businessman Josef (Jerry Adler), a fuel and oil storage facility that will give Abel leverage in the local competition. All he needs to do is come up with $1.5 million in 30 days and the land is his. Otherwise, Josef keeps the deposit and sells the property to a competitor. Abel is stressed but confident. He runs a clean business, prides himself on Standard's presentation and dedication to customer service, and has a great relationship with his bank. Of course, everything starts falling apart. For the last year, Abel's trucks have been occasionally hijacked on their routes, the drivers assaulted and the oil sold to the competition. These occurrences have been on an alarming increase, the latest one resulting in dedicated driver Julian (Elyes Gabel) getting his face smashed and his jaw broken. Abel and his lawyer Andrew Walsh (an almost unrecognizable Albert Brooks) go to District Attorney Lawrence (David Oyelowo) to address the problem, only to be told that the city's been riddled with crime for over a year and hijacked heating oil trucks aren't a priority. And on top of that, Lawrence is launching an investigation into corruption among the city's heating oil providers, with a particular emphasis on Standard. And when the hijackings continue, Walsh and Anna, behind Abel's back, make an agreement with Teamsters rep O'Leary (Peter Gerety) to supply the drivers with guns accompanied by permits that range from sketchy to completely forged.
As all of these issues crash in on the beleaguered Abel, he keeps telling himself that everything will be OK because he runs an honest business, but he's deluding himself. In the revisionist bio he's imagined for himself, he thinks he's built the business from the ground up, when in fact, he bought it cheap from his low-level mobster father-in-law, with Anna cooking the books in a subtle enough way that it's taken the D.A.'s office ten years to catch on to it. An immigrant, Abel believes in the American dream so much that he's willing to convince himself that he's above the corruption that infests his chosen industry. In a very intense, controlled, and pitch-perfect performance, Isaac vanishes into his character the way a young Pacino and De Niro would. His Abel Morales is, at his core, a fundamentally good man who thinks that as long as he doesn't see something illegal happening, everything's going to be OK. He's too smart to not know about Anna's machinations, whether she's falsifying tax records or skimming off the top. The one major flaw in Chandor's script is the sometimes one-dimensional presentation of Anna, though it's not the fault of Chastain. She's a loving wife and, in a rarity for this type of film, an equal partner, but she's still too often cartoonishly bitchy and ruthless, saddled with heavy-handed, melodramatic ways of showing that she's the decisive ballbuster while Abel needs to man up and get with the program, such as the scene where they're driving home from dinner and hit a deer. Opting to put the poor creature out of its misery, Abel hesitantly dithers with a tire iron, while Anna pulls out a gun and shoots it in the head.
Elsewhere, Chandor offers two marvelous, pulse-pounding chase sequences--one during a shootout on the 59th Street Bridge in heavy traffic, the other a long, stunning FRENCH CONNECTION homage when Abel hears a truck hijacking on the radio and realizes he's right in the area where it's taking place. At the end, after a bitingly cynical dialogue exchange between Abel and Lawrence that illustrates just how intertwined politics and business really are, A MOST VIOLENT YEAR is still just Lumet-worship first and foremost (with some bonus affection for guys like William Friedkin and Alan J. Pakula). But it's the closest thing to a new Sidney Lumet film that you're ever going to get, and I imagine that's the best praise one can bestow upon it. Dialogue-heavy and character-driven, set in a world that exists in a perpetual shade of moral and ethical gray, A MOST VIOLENT YEAR is the kind of film that should've been an Oscar darling, but still-not-ready-for-prime-time distributor A24 Films only gave it a minimal, NYC/L.A. release on December 31, 2014. While that wasn't a fatal mistake, A24 completely fell asleep on the job when they were too late getting screeners out to Academy members to qualify it for awards consideration. As a result, what was pegged as a surefire Oscar candidate ended up with exactly zero nominations, all but killing its awards-season momentum and any moviegoer interest with the film finally opening nationwide at the end of January. Nevertheless, its day will come, as it's the work of a strong, confident filmmaker who's only starting to hit the peak of his powers. There's going to be some great films from J.C. Chandor in the coming years.
Writer/director Nicholas McCarthy's THE PACT (2012) was one of the most effective feature debuts in the horror genre in recent years. A terrific example of slow-burn done right, THE PACT was a genuine sleeper that's found a major cult following thanks to its streaming on Netflix Instant. McCarthy's follow-up effort, AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR (shot and shown at festivals under the title HOME), shares some common themes with THE PACT and again allows the director to indulge in his gift for establishing an ominous sense of dread that grows more stomach-turning and uneasy with each new sequence. But McCarthy tries to tackle too much here: too many characters and too many detours lead to too many cut corners and too many loose ends. As in THE PACT, McCarthy's key concern is family: THE PACT had adult sisters whose memories of their dysfunctional upbringing manifest in unexpected ways in the present day. AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR has adult sisters who seem to have been orphaned at a relatively young age, with the older Leigh (MARIA FULL OF GRACE Oscar-nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno) seeing herself as the mother figure to the younger Vera (GLEE's Naya Rivera). But before we get to any of that, McCarthy's focus is on a teenager (Ashley Rickards) who falls hard for a boy (Nick Eversman) and ends up (I guess) inhabited by some kind of demonic spirit after playing a high-stakes shell game with the boy's creepy uncle (Michael Massee). Some initially unspecified amount of time passes as McCarthy then shifts to Leigh, a real estate agent tasked with selling the house where the girl used to live, and whom Leigh occasionally sees in the house only to flee when she tries to talk to her. Circumstances soon put Vera in the position of central character, when she's forced to take it upon herself to find the mystery girl and get to the bottom of assorted supernatural goings-on.
McCarthy plays his cards close to the vest in the early going, with some narrative time-jumping and a major reveal involving Rickards' character that probably should've landed better than it does. It's not unusual for a filmmaker to shift protagonists in the middle of the movie--PSYCHO is the granddaddy of that move--and Zack Parker's PROXY is probably the most recent example of one that does it successfully, but McCarthy has three alternating lead shifts before we get a real handle on any of them. Once he settles on Vera, it works somewhat because Rivera turns in the kind of strong, intense performance that THE PACT got from Caity Lotz, but Vera's story seems to gloss over important details and how she gets from one point to another. Throughout, the characters remain too enigmatic for us to be fully engrossed in the story. This is especially the case with Moreno's Leigh, who is saddled with the film's clumsiest exposition, whether McCarthy has her mentioning her immigrant status (younger Vera was born after their parents came to the US)--which seems to come about more from his unnecessary concern over explaining Moreno's accent than anything to do with advancing the narrative--or her inability to have children and her wish that Vera settle down and have some of her own. Like THE PACT, there's much focus on motherhood, children, and family, but it just doesn't seem as well-planned or fully-realized. If you'd never seen these films and watched them back-to-back, in either order, and were told both were made by the same guy, you'd swear AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR was the one made by a nervous first-timer throwing everything he's got at the wall and seeing what sticks because he might not get another chance, and THE PACT was the solid, sure-handed later effort of a filmmaker with confidence, discipline, and experience. On the basis of THE PACT alone (if you haven't seen it, you really should), McCarthy is one of the most promising horror prospects going today, and there are occasions where AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR works (there's one unnerving sequence with Rickards at a babysitting job that could almost function as its own short film, and the notion of a spirit taking over someone and "wearing them like a costume," is a uniquely creepy description), but it too often feels like he's just belaboring points made in THE PACT and stumbling over half-baked ideas about things like infertility and the immigrant experience that don't seem to belong here. Maybe this is the kind of film that improves on a repeat viewing, or would play better if you haven't already seen THE PACT, a simpler and much superior work. (Unrated, 93 mins) THE DEVIL'S HAND (US - 2014)
After two years on the shelf and no less than four title changes, THE DEVIL'S HAND received a cursory VOD dumping by Lionsgate sub-label Roadside Attractions in October, a full year after they took it off the Halloween 2013 release schedule when it was called WHERE THE DEVIL HIDES. That's rarely a good sign, but while THE DEVIL'S HAND isn't all that great, it does have some moments where it seems that a better, smarter film is trying to break out of the merely mediocre one that got released. Opening on June 6, 1994 in a cult-like, Amish-looking religious community called New Bethlehem, the film deals with a foretold prophecy that the sixth girl born on the sixth day of the sixth month will be the Drommelkind--"the Devil's Hand"--Satan reborn to wreak havoc on God's world, and it so happens that six women are giving birth this very night. One of the six newborn girls is suffocated by her own mother, and New Bethlehem leader Elder Beacon (Colm Meaney) is thwarted in his attempt to kill the other five by the progressive-minded Jacob (Rufus Sewell), who not only doesn't believe in Beacon's sternly fire-and-brimstone leadership style but also happens to be father of one of the other babies. 18 years later, the five surviving girls are best friends and barely-tolerated outcasts in the community, and starting with Hannah (Nicole Elliott), they're being offed one-by-one by a scythe-wielding maniac in a black-hooded robe. Jacob's seizure-and-visions-prone daughter Mary (Alycia Debnam Carey) starts to question the ideology of New Bethlehem, much to the disapproval of her bitter, bitchy stepmother Rebekah (an underused Jennifer Carpenter). As the body count rises--some of the girls' parents start dropping like flies, either by their own hand or by the scythe killer--Elder Beacon's tight grip on the community starts to slip, and with young, blossoming teenage girls ignoring his orders, that's all the evidence he needs to conclude that it's the Devil's work.
There's a thought-provoking film to be made about the terrifying, blind fervor of religious fanaticism, but only Meaney seems to be acting in that film. He's perfect as the unsympathetic, power-mad elder, overseeing his flock like a junkyard dog and prone to barking excuses like "As long as the Lord governs my actions, I can do no wrong!" With its concealed scythe killer evoking memories of the post-SCREAM-and-I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER slashers of the late '90s, Mary's romance with the sheriff's sensitive dudebro son (Thomas McDonnell), and most of the cast coming from shows like THE VAMPIRE DIARIES, THE ORIGINALS, THE 100, and REIGN, too much of THE DEVIL'S HAND plays like The CW commissioned a remake of Wes Craven's DEADLY BLESSING. Other than Meaney, the relatively older vets like Sewell and Carpenter have little to do (both vanish from the movie by the end), but the performances of the younger actors are better than expected, especially Australian actress Carey, who was recently cast in the WALKING DEAD spinoff COBALT. Written by Karl Mueller, who co-wrote the reprehensible THE DIVIDE, and directed by one Christian E. Christiansen (if indeed that is your real name, sir), whose previous credits include the 2011 Leighton Meester/Minka Kelly SINGLE WHITE FEMALE ripoff THE ROOMMATE, THE DEVIL'S HAND also demonstrates sure signs of cutting to secure a PG-13 rating, and as we all know, horror fans want things as watered-down and PG-13 as possible. There's lots of splattery aftermaths to the mayhem, but little is shown during,and some of the murder scenes are rather choppy, no pun intended. THE DEVIL'S HAND is pretty mild and forgettable, but it's fast-paced and short enough that it gets the job done if you're just looking for a dumb movie to unwind to after a long day. There's just a lot here to back up the nagging feeling that it really could've been something more and that maybe it's just been hacked down to its most basic mainstream and safest, unchallenging elements, like some suggestions that Elder Beacon is molesting some of New Bethlehem's teenage girls--don't expect anything with a PG-13 rating to explore that plot thread. As it is, THE DEVIL'S HAND is little more than the intersecting union of a "CW viewers" and "Colm Meaney stalkers" Venn diagram. (PG-13, 86 mins)
