One of the season’s offerings tries a point of view not often found in American movies — a guy who wants to do the right thing and, insisting that no guns be used, prevails in a thug controlled business.  Too bad the title, A Most Violent Year, indicates the opposite.  I almost didn’t go, not needing even a fictional most violent year to add to the nonfictional ones we are living through.  But I did, and OK, it’s a good film, reminding many of the giant of the genre, Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy, with much less blood.

It turns out that the title refers not necessarily to the action of the movie but to the actual year, 1981, in which it unfolds, statistically the most violent year in New York City history.

We get the picture right way. A fuel truck is blocked by two cars after coming through a toll booth.  The driver is beaten and tossed from the cab. The truck is driven off,  setting in motion the mystery:  what is going on? What are the relationships? Are first appearances deceiving? Will he pay his debt? And, how in the heck does this marriage keep from running off the rails?

The characters are all well acted, from minor, cops and secretaries, to, and especially, the leads, Oscar Isaac as Abel Morales and Jessica Chastain as wife Anna.  David Oyelowo is fine, here as a possibly corrupt DA instead of Martin Luther King, Jr in Selma. [He sure loses his British accent in all sorts of convincing ways!]

The mix of New Yorkers is great, from the Hassidic Jews with payo curls, to the threatening tough guys and hopeful young sales people,  to Abel and Anna’s mixed marriage, he a Hispanic immigrant, she a girl from the neighborhood.

The camera work, lighting and editing are first rate.  Two chase scenes, one on foot and subway, the other in a car and truck, are well executed, believable and tension filled.  Interior scenes have the dim lighting appropriate to the gritty surroundings of an old oil storage yard, and mob frequented rooms.  The big new middle class home of Morales’ aspirations is dark and ominous when a dog starts whining in the middle of the night and brightly lit for a child’s birthday party, the perfect setup for a police raid.

The story, on the whole, rings real.  The opening truck jacking is one of many suffered by Abel who has built his small retail oil supply company, by superior service,  into serious competition to other tough guy led companies.  In one wonderful scene he schools three young sales associates,  instructing them to hold eye contact with potential customers longer than is comfortable, while doing so himself. As the jackings and thefts mount, he of course suspects his competitors and calls a Godfather like meeting around a long table to put an end to it. All deny complicity.

But the trouble is not only beatings and thefts.  He makes a down payment, in cash, in a briefcase, on an unused oil storage site with water access.  Once it’s his, the leverage will really favor him; his competitors will be at further disadvantage.  To close the deal he needs his friendly neighborhood bank, which in early scenes, is all in.  As the jackings, and then a shoot-out, hits the news, the bank decides it can’t risk the loan.  Abel is left with $1.2 million to raise in a few days or lose the downpayment.  The tension, naturally, gets pulled tighter, with Abel, all along trying to take “the path that is most right.”

He refuses to arm his drivers. In the capo’s meeting he is very much a tough guy in his pristine camel hair coat, but issues no threats of warfare.  In his foot chase of one of the culprits he has a discarded gun in his hand and never uses it.  [He’s no pacifist, however.  A savage beating gets some answers he is after.]

In the end he succeeds on his own terms.  We cheer, but only halfway. His cold insistence on performance-while-in-danger has led to the death of one employee and the beating of another.  As his success seems assured, and new power coming to him, he and his nemesis the DA, the markers of the ‘good guys,’ come to an “understanding.”

His promise to himself is not purity but to “take the path that is most right.”  For an American movie, this is a step, if only a small one, away from the decades of those in which the guy with the biggest explosions wins. Nice.

There are some loose ends, though.  The main is the perplexing relationship between Abel and Anna.  It has the mob flavor we are used to in movies and TV series.  She, however, is very ferocious in her own right, warning her not-aggressive-enough husband, “You’re not gonna like what’s gonna happen when I get involved.”

When, in a heart stopping car smash, it turns out to be with a deer, she demands that he finish the animal off.  When he hesitates, she fires well placed shots from behind him, with a pistol he has not known about, nor wanted in the house.  Yet, along with this gang-girl persona there are several scenes of the tenderest, romantic kissing, the kind we are accustomed to finding in stories of souls interlocked, psyches in sync.  There are plenty of ways to kiss; typically we expect some relation to the source, the personalities involved.  There was a confusion of character here, to my eye.

And, oh by the way, she admits late in the movie, to have been stealing from him; no ingenue she.

The confession that begins to close the mystery is that two, and only two, men have been involved in the truck thefts.  We have seen situations, however,  where at least three if not four would seem to have been necessary.  They are intended to be small-time hoods, stealing and selling, but someone shows up at Abel’s house with a gun. Why, if the game is oil theft and re-sale?  Why is a salesman beaten, if those whose sales are threatened are not involved?  If we’re meant to think the two-hoods aren’t the full story, we need a little more help from script and shot.

I know movies have pre-release audiences and scenes are tweaked.  I would have like a bit more on Anna’s background.  Was her father more than a small-time gangster?  Would Abel, and we, have been aware that her threats had real, not simply rhetorical, weight?  If the purchase of the storage yard was threatening to his competitors wouldn’t we have seen their fingers more tightly on triggers? Suggestion of their involvement more than simply purchasing whatever oil is offered for sale?

But, you know what?  Go.  You’ll be entertained, and glad that one guy says “no guns on my watch,” and comes up with the prize he was after.