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Swap out Californian river-beds dried to desert scales for the snow-locked graffiti swamp corridors of an abandoned New York City; swap out water for oil; swap out Faye Dunaway's brittle busted sister-mother for one part Elvira Hancock and three-fifths Angela DeMarco (four-fifths including those nails); swap out all the influences he's painted his sleeves with and its clear director JC Chandor had Chinatown and Michelle Pfeiffer and all kinds of Our Favorite Things on his brain as he plowed out A Most Violent Year, his latest chatty psalm about folks and capitalism and folks who love capitalism. It's not really a reference-fest; it's no Tarantino re-purposing of dead stock... but he is very clearly riffing.
And some, not all, but some of it works - more in an intellectual over emotional manner; you see why he spins one way when you expect another; you see Jessica Chastain done up like Tootsie too. But you can't help but find yourself wishing, like for example when you see Chastain picking up boxes with her palms lest she break an impeccably impossibly long nail, for more of that humor and Brooklyn-moll heart - for her to just fling off the rails a la a fit of Elvira's coked-up disco dancing. Sometimes it's best just to shoot all the damned deer dead.
A Most Violent Year is purposefully airless, boxing itself in, and purposefully undermining its own coulda-been lurid touches - a gaudy sweep of color would've been welcomed now and again against those cool Armani overcoats. That golden little girl gun, the threat of violence hanging in the air, some gee-whiz pop pop pop. It maybe mistakes, once or twice too many, the purposeful swing of the heel for the pointed tip of the shoe.
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