A Most Violent Year (2014) should have been an Oscar contender Written and directed by JC Chandor (Margin Call) and set in the crime-ridden culture of early 1980s New York City (which was the most violent year on record in the city’s history)  smart  shadowy tribute to the crime dramas of the seventies and early eighties  when the culture of crime and corruption was treated as a systemic issue rather than an outlier problem solved in the final reel