Film Director JC Chandor is doing good service by making films about the messy, imperfect, compromises that inevitably stalk the real world of doing business. His latest film "A Most Violent Year," set in New York in 1981, tracks the drama of the hero's choices as he navigates a lawless environment and closes an ambitious deal. New York at the time was broke, visibly in decay, and violence was at its peak.

In an earlier film "Margin Call" (2011) Chandor captured the business culture in investment banks during the recent financial crisis. While the personalities he drew were mostly unattractive, and the ethics of the choices were mostly bad, he did capture the pressures that shaped them. He made his characters human. This is an advance on the caricatures in films such as Scorsese's "Wolf of Wall Street" and Cronenberg's "Cosmopolis." Most filmmakers either are not interested in the world of business for ideological reasons or they have no access. Chandor grew up in a banking family and has both interest and access to people who can help him make this world come to life in an authentic way.

"A Most Violent Year" is more optimistic than "Margin Call." The hero's rule is that "you must take the path that is most right" - and in the real world finding the right path is a constant struggle. This is a nuanced film about trying to live a moral life.