http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2015/01/a_most_violent_year_review_oscar_isaac_and_jessica_chastain_star_in_godfather.html

J.C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year is a most curious movie, one with nearly all the elements of a classic crime-family saga and yet somehow lacking the moral complexity and emotional heft of the films to which it pays fastidious aesthetic homage: the New York–set urban thrillers of Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Prince of the City) and Coppola’s Godfather series. A Most Violent Year couldn’t look or sound cooler. Bradford Young’s chiaroscuro cinematography lends a bleak, sooty glamour to the malaise-drenched environs of New York City in 1981. Alex Ebert’s music—especially the mournful horn motif that follows would-be heating-oil magnate Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) as he drives around the once-mean waterfronts of the outer boroughs—lovingly evokes a lost era of film scoring when heroes came complete with their own pensive, melodic themes.