It’s hard to forgive a stupid plot, but A Most Violent Year, the latest film by the newly acclaimed J.C. Chandor, makes for an almost convincing apology. We begin inside looking out, a point-of-view shot from a running Oscar Isaac, telling us this is a film from his eyes as much as it’s a film about ambition. He’s running—he’ll work for success—and he’s not afraid to sweat for it. Isaac plays Abel Morales, an immigrant entrepreneur and heating oil salesman that has an honest face that paradoxically hints at a coiled ruthlessness. The year is 1981, in the midst the biggest crime wave in New York City’s recorded history, and his slimy competitors send gun-toting goons to rip off his oil trucks. With an unusually daft understanding of business, he refuses to retaliate or even to arm his helpless truck drivers. His business, his, he insists will stay clean. He has an inherent moral dynamic that is as brave as it is hypocritical. His cunning Lady Macbeth of a wife (Jessica Chastain), the daughter of a known gangster, works with and against him. Their values are not the same.

Abel is honest but not too honest, smart but maybe not smart enough, and believes in the American Dream with a childlike vigor that’s naive but honorable. Abel cares about honor like the patriarchal figure he desperately wants to be. He’s an amalgam of Michael and Vito Corleone but is neither. Chandor has dressed his lead figure like Michael, only with a camel overcoat instead of black. He ensures you’re aware of the reference. Abel and his wife need 1.5 million dollars in 30 days, giving us a ticking clock to the narrative that’s meant to propel it. Isaac and Chastain give excellent turns, one quiet and one loud, and so does Interstellar and Selma’s David Oyelowo as an ambitious district attorney hot on Abel’s tail.

J.C. Chandor’s first two films are undoubtedly impressive, but without the dramatic relevancy inherent in the ’08 financial crisis in Margin Call or an inherently intense tale of solitude and survival at sea in All is Lost, A Most Violent Year puts the writer-director at bat for his first film in the major leagues. He has no wall to fall back on, and we see whatever skill he has clearly on display. A Most Violent Year walks with the same subversive swagger as Robert Altman’s revisionist genre movies from the 1970s, with The Long Goodbye remixing film noir and McCabe & Mrs. Miller reimagining the western (both are great). Genre tropes like the femme fatale have been observed and reassembled into a fresh pattern, but ultimately fail at delivering an inspired take on the material. If you’ve fashioned your lead like the main character in The Godfather, you’re really taking on the Yankees of cinema. Chandor gets on base, but only barely.