A Most Violent Year is setting the bar high for movies in 2015. The flick, set in crime-riddled New York City in 1981 and starring Jessica Chastain, Oscar Isaac, and Albert Brooks, has a 91% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Here's what they're saying:
- Portraying a heating-oil dealer facing a criminal investigation, Isaac "recalls, without mimicry, the young Al Pacino," Joe Morgenstern writes at the Wall Street Journal. Director JC Chandor "gives Mr. Isaac everything he needs for a tour de force performance, and the actor makes the most of what he gets." The film itself is "ambitious," though it "suffers from a silly ending."
- This "period drama about the American dream-gone-sour" builds slowly, Chris Nashawaty writes at Entertainment Weekly. But "it's the kind of uncompromising movie we don't see much of anymore. And it makes you nostalgic for a time when the world was worse and the movies were better." Chastain's character is a bit cliche as "the ferociously driven Lady Macbeth wife," Nashawaty writes, but Chastain adds "unexpected layers and a fresh twist."