'Most Violent Year' a most inspiring motion picture

New York businessman Abel Morales, played with uncompromising strength and quiet grace by "Inside Llewyn Davis" star Oscar Isaac, plays by the rules.

He believes in fairness and sharing with both his competitors and employees. He doesn't believe in violence. In all matters of commerce and conduct, he determines the "best, right way" to do things and does it.

In J.C. Chandor's pressure-cooker period drama "A Most Violent Year," Abel Morales will be tested by the powerful forces of corruption, greed, violence and self-interest determined to break him.

There are moments in this movie where we root for Morales to put aside his George Bailey personality and fight back for his survival. We beg him to do it, for his sake.

But this is not a story that panders to our desires for easy answers and quick, cathartic solutions. Chandor's drama inspires us to rise above those around us, to become the best versions of ourselves during the worst of circumstances.

"A Most Violent Year" clocked in at No. 3 on my list of 2014's best movies and ranks as the most harrowing and moral motion picture about capitalism and the American dream that I can remember.

On the surface, "A Most Violent Year" appears to be a perfect Republican picture.

Morales doesn't hail from the ranks of Hollywood's typical blue-collar employees fighting against amoral corporations.

Morales is the CEO of his own corporation, a heating oil supply company struggling to survive against regulations, suspect legal investigations and ruthless competitors in a tight New York market during 1981, statistically one of the most crime-infested years in the Big Apple's history.

(The title suggests a routine, violence-soaked gangster drama or street gang movie. It's anything but.)

The plot of "A Most Violent Year" is triggered when Morales and his sour, old attorney (Albert Brooks, playing it straight as an arrow) negotiate a deal with Hasidic Jews for an oil retention facility at a dock.

Morales has 30 days to finalize the deal, otherwise he forfeits a sizable down payment.

Then, several of Morales' Standard Oil trucks get hijacked and abandoned after their expensive cargo has been siphoned off.

Someone clearly has targeted Morales by stealing his trucks and crippling his ability to complete the land deal.

Morales asks the authorities for protection. A tough D.A. ("Selma" star David Oyelowo) not only refuses to protect the shipments, he advices Morales that his office will be filing charges against him for financial crimes.

It doesn't help that Morales' wife Anna (the amazing Jessica Chastain, in tough-and-sexy mode) is the daughter of a Brooklyn mobster and a master at cooking books. She doesn't understand her husband's absolute resistance to arming his drivers, even though they're being roughed up by bandits.

As he did in his debut feature "Margin Call," writer/director Chandor squeezes white-knuckle drama out of business dealings with a keen eye for detail and a sharp knack for hair-raising, yet restrained suspense.

The nocturnal scene in which Anna hears something downstairs and Morales goes to investigate is a stomach-knotter, but nothing like Anna finding her toddler son playing with a loaded, cocked .45 pistol that someone has dropped outside their upscale, expensive new home.

Chandor wisely never overwrites his scenes as many Hollywood screenwriters often do under the delusion audiences are unaware and stupid.

(In a scene where Morales picks up a tire iron and contemplates how to put down a poor deer hit by his car, Anna cooly walks over and pumps three .38 caliber bullets into the beast. Morales is clearly enraged by this insult to his masculinity and defiance of his no-violence position. He says nothing in the car, yet the sound is deafening.)

Issac is an acting revelation here. His calm voice, immaculate coif and expensive yellow coat (suggesting Dick Tracy) give him a commanding presence that has been favorably compared to Michael Corleone in "The Godfather."

But like Tom Hardy's concrete boss in 2014's "Locke," Isaac's Morales celebrates intelligence, restraint, compassion, patience and mercy.

"A Most Dangerous Year" gives us much more than a riveting time at the movies for adults.

It gives us hope.

“A Most Violent Year”

★ ★ ★ ★

Starring: Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, Albert Brooks, David Oyelowo, Alesandro Nivola

Directed by: J.C. Chandor

Other: An A24 release. Rated R for language, violence. In limited release. 150 minutes