10 Movies That Made New York City Look Like The Worst Place In The World

7. A Most Violent Year (2014)

The city of New York is a relentless presence of evil in A Most Violent Year; continuously pressuring business mogul protagonist Abel Morales to prove that he's as much of a gangster as his clothes suggest he is. The film's title comes from the fact that the story is set in 1981 - statistically the most crime-riddled year in the history of New York City. Whilst immigrant Morales builds himself up an oil empire based on honesty and hard work, everyone and everything in the city seems to conspire together to take it away from him. Director J.C. Chandor turns NYC into the main antagonist of A Most Violent Year, giving the city a cold, ominous, remorseless depiction through its winter setting and crumbling walls. The wide array of crooked and desperate characters act as the city's accomplices, and Chandor even provides New York with its very own modern-day femme fatale in Jessica Chastain. Wicked, hard-boiled and tense from beginning to end, A Most Violent Year makes NYC 1981 look like the worst possible time and place to try and kick off the American dream. The movie acts as a microcosm of the transition period where NYC bottomed-out of being crime-ridden, before eventually emerging as a widely beloved tourist destination in the years to come.