Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac Are a Crime-Wave Couple in 'A Most Violent Year' Trailer

Compared to most of his peers, writer-director J.C. Chandor is a late bloomer: In 2011, after fifteen years of directing commercials, Chandor made his from-outta-nowhere debut with Margin Call, a taut, talkative boardroom thriller set within the white-collar sweatshops that helped bring about the late-aughts financial meltdown. His follow-up, last year’s All is Lost, couldn’t have been more different: A suspenseful, largely dialogue-free drama about a wealthy traveler (Robert Redford) who finds himself adrift at sea. Both films were about crisis — how it recalibrates your reflexes, upends your allegiances, and tests your ability to adapt.

So it’s fitting that Chandor’s next movie, A Most Violent Year — the trailer for which you can watch above — is set in a world of ceaseless crises: New York City circa 1981, a period in which crime and corruption were rampant. Though the intriguingly brooding teaser is light on plot specifics, Year stars Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac as a married couple whose lives are touched by ever-escalating violence and deceit.

"When it feels scary to jump, that is exactly when you jump," Isaac’s character intones at one point. "Otherwise you end up staying in the same place your entire life." It’s the credo of a man who’s too restless for repetition — and a philosophy to which the fllm’s ever-unpredictable creator could certainly relate.

A Most Violent Year opens. Dec. 31.