'A Most Violent Year' conjures up the moral ambiguity of '70s cinema

Early on in my career in the music business, an older, wiser artist gave me some advice that has always stuck with me: A contract is only as good as your lawyer. In other words, when it comes to anything short of a fingerprint on a murder weapon, it doesn't matter what the law says, only having the money to enforce it.

Music is a notoriously dirty business, but every commercial enterprise has its share of the viciously greedy, who'll play as fast and loose with the law as they can until a court order — or perhaps a baseball bat — brings them to their senses.

"A Most Violent Year" is that rare film which explores this ugly reality skulking in the shadow of America's good, honest Protestant-work-ethic entrepreneurialism. Set in New York City in 1981 — which really was a bad year for the near-bankrupt city, with 2,166 murders, more than 120,000 robberies and a two-week trash strike, to make things even more miserable — the film follows Colombian immigrant Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) as he strives mightily to achieve the American dream.

Abel runs a small company that delivers home heating fuel, and he struggles to expand his market share at the expense of other local rivals, some of whom are willing to play dirty, as Abel learns when his trucks start getting hijacked at gunpoint. It's bad timing: Abel has just dropped his life savings to make a down payment on a piece of riverfront property that he needs to grow his business, but he has only 30 days to come up with the rest of the capital or risk losing everything.

Much like Michael Corleone from "The Godfather" — the resemblance between Isaac and a young Al Pacino is striking — Abel is a man who thinks he can keep his nose clean while swimming in a cesspool. The rest of the world is eager to take advantage of that until he wises up. Unlike Corleone's violence-abhorring wife Kay, Abel's fiery Brooklyn-born spouse Anna (Jessica Chastain) is more than willing to use her dad's connections with the mob to take care of things. Abel's attorney (Albert Brooks) counsels caution, but the truckers' union is insisting that their drivers carry handguns for protection, while the D.A. (David Oyelowo) provides no help, instead informing Abel that he is under investigation for corrupt business practices. What's an honest guy to do?

Director J.C. Chandor, who made his mark with "Margin Call" and "All Is Lost," shows a fascination with 1970s cinema in "A Most Violent Year," not least in the film's moral ambiguity. Chandor seems to have studied the look of "The Godfather" carefully, with a similar tendency toward dark earth tones and dimly lit interiors. A chase onto a graffiti-covered subway car recalls "The French Connection," but without hitting a similar level of adrenaline.

Chandor's New York is also strangely depopulated: People always seem to be meeting in empty lots and train yards, driving their boxy vintage cars down streets full of graffiti but devoid of pedestrians. Budget constraints, I'm sure, but it does give the film an isolated feel.

"A Most Violent Year" never quite builds to the cataclysm its title suggests, but it holds your interest in a more subdued, slow-burn sort of way. Abel wants to do the right thing, but he also wants to succeed, and those are two impulses that don't always reconcile well in business. When Abel's lawyer, fearing wiretaps, suggests they step outside for a walk to talk over their problems, Abel finally explodes, "This is what it has come to? We have to act like a couple of gangsters?"

Well, in the city that never sleeps, that's what it takes to be top of the heap — just ask Frank Sinatra.