I just watched this movie.
Oscar Isaacs plays the owner of a fuel oil company in 1981, the peak year of violent crime in New York City. Needless to say, it’s an industry in which organized crime is salient, in real life and of course double in the movies. But he just wants to sell fuel oil. One way of looking at it, is it’s The Sopranos from the point of view of the people they preyed on. Another way, it’s the kind of movie Deirdre McCloskey used to call for, a celebration of bourgeois virtue. I don’t know if McCloskey would like the results in this particular case. What’s very clear here is how much bourgeois virtue depends on, or is constituted by, its dialectical relationship with the liberal order on the one hand, the rule of law; and on the other hand the personal loyalties of family and tribe. Your status as a business owner depends on your relationship to your wife, children, in-laws, on the one hand, and to the agents of the state on the other. The capitalist is always an embodied human being, never the pure personification of capital. (It’s worth noting that Isaacs’ key counterparties are a Hasidic clan and a grandfather-granddaughter operation.)
We also see the void at the heart of the capitalist ethic. Several times, other characters ask Isaacs why it’s so important to him that his business keep growing. His answers range from “Just because” to “I don’t understand the question.” These exchanges reminded me of a line from Nietzsche that Bob Fitch used to describe real estate speculators:
We must not ask the money-making banker the reason for his restless activity, it is foolish. The active roll as the stone rolls, according to the stupidity of mechanics.
Isaacs’ performance is quite affecting, and it’s clear that his character has real human connections to his family, his employees, and his business peers. That only makes it more effective when we see how much his concrete choices come down to “the stupidity of mechanics.”
The depiction of New York back in the day feels real. The dialogue is smart and the camerawork and sound are effective, in my uniformed judgement. It’s a good movie, I recommend it.