The mostly Oscar bait A Most Violent Year is a largely hollow experience. Review by Matt Cummings In Writer-Director J.C. Candor's A Most violent Year , business and morals clash in the world of 1981 New York. Then and there, the city is undergoing one of its most murderous years in history, with ordinary people caught in the crossfire and businessmen seeing their property stolen from underneath them. It's here that small business owner Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) finds himself pining for a brighter future with a world trying desperately to take it all away from him. Married into the heating oil industry which was run by his wife Anna's (Jessica Chastain) father, Abel is trying to expand his business by borrowing the money needs for a massive expansion. But his jealous competition is watching and plotting against him, even as Abel tries to keep his trucks from being stolen by those same rivals. It all comes to a head when his lawyer Andrew (Albert Brooks) inf