A Most Violent Year has the look and sound of a mid-career Martin Scorsese film – and that’s a very good thing. With a cast including Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac, J.C. Chandor’s forbidding-looking drama will premiere at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles this Thursday. In preparation for that, we get to see a few new trailers from the US and the UK, both of them making a compelling case for the quality of the film.
Isaac stars as immigrant businessman Abel Morales, trying to build and expand his business during the winter of 1981 – one of the most violent times in the history of New York City. As murders and rapes eat the city from the inside out, Morales and his well-connected wife, Anna (Chastain), try to protect their family and their business, all the while getting drawn deeper into the decay and corruption around them.
Based on what we see in these trailers, A Most Violent Year promises to be another success for Chandor, who is still on top after the one-two punch of Margin Call and All Is Lost. Chastain and Isaac (who really deserves to get a lot more play than he does) look great here, already prompting some tiny murmurs of Oscar that will undoubtedly pick up once the film is shown this week. The trailers are compelling without overdoing violence or darkness, though I think we can expect a good bit of both. When all is said and done, I’m willing to go just about anywhere with this cast, which also includes David Oyelowo and Albert Brooks.
A Most Violent Year will get its NY/LA release on December 31, 2014, which just gives it Oscar eligibility. We can expect to see a wider release sometime in January.
You can check out all the action in the US trailer above, and the additional UK trailer below.
