The Accountant

Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is an accountant with high functioning autism who behind his seemingly legitimate small town practice operates as a launderer and auditor for the criminal underworld and possesses an array of combat skills. Taking a legitimate contract for work at technology firm Living Robotics, Wolff is hired by CEO Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow) to investigate some apparent irregularities in their financial books first identified by in house accountant Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick). As Wolff works with Dana and confirms her suspicions, this leads to the two of them unearthing a conspiracy within the company that puts targets on both their backs and against his better judgment Wolff risks protecting Dana from whoever is behind the kill order.

The Accountant is a 2016 action-thriller directed by Gavin O'Connor and Bill Bubuqe. The film became a decent sized hit earning $155 million against a $44 million budget and also generated a positive response from audiences. Critical reception tended to be more mixed with many praising the action sequences and performances (particularly Affleck's), but there was also criticism levied against the screenplay which was seen as overly busy and some labeling the film as potentially offensive to autistic individuals due to a prominent neurodivergent character's engaging in violent acts. Taken for what it is, The Accountant provides some traditional genre thrills with an unconventional and engaging lead character.

Despite the film following an accountant, the film follows a pretty familiar framework with some clear DNA traces to films such as John Wick or The Equalizer with maybe a splash of the style of A Beautiful Mind. Ben Affleck does really well as Wolff who certainly falls within the trope of "quiet introspective badass", but there's some good character work that shows him hardening himself against grating stimuli and engaging in meditative or coping mechanisms that allow him an oasis. This is where I disagree with the critics standing on the film portraying autism in a negative way because the titular Accountant does similar moral code motivated actions similar to John Wick or Robert McCall and it falls in line with action movie universe logic and there's really no difference here aside from the character having autism even down to him protecting innocents even if it's at his own expense. Admittedly there's probably a little too much story in the Accountant with all the detours that go into the accountant's childhood, the conspiracy plot, and a side plot involving J. K. Simmons' Raymond King and Cynthia Addal-Robinson's Marybeth Medina working as Treasury Agents investigating the accountant which probably didn't need to be in the movie and admittedly leads to the film feeling more meandering than a straight narrative, but the characters and backstories were so interesting that I didn't mind the main plot had to pause for the detours.

The Accountant takes familiar crime/action thriller tropes and frames them around a unique lead character in an engaging universe. While it's plot deviates from the traditional framework for this kind of movie, it's oddly appropriate to have an unconventional journey for an unconventional character.

Gavin O'Connor, the director of my favorite movie Warrior. Ben Affleck, the once ridiculed but now stupendous entertainer. J.K. Simmons, the distinguished actor from Whiplash. Jon Bernthal, the rising star from The Walking Dead who's a known but yet still unknown actor, and he's great by the way. John Lithgow, an actor who delivers uncanny especially when he's the villain. Bill Dubuque, who the hell is this guy, but he wrote this movie, and this appears to be his first major project besides Robert Downey Jr's The Judge. I enjoy all of these people's work one way or another. This movie has a good director, good leading man, and an all-star cast. From the trailers, this movie seemed like an intellectual movie about a young boy growing up with mental problems, the boy grows up and becomes an accountant, through his work he does business with shady characters, for some reason his clients want him dead, but we know The Accountant is far more capable of much more than they know. I was anticipating this movie based on all the information I just provided. I thought this movie couldn't miss. Is The Accountant a good movie? The Accountant is a good movie.

The direction of this seems rather simple, but as the story progresses, things become a bit too complicated, and maybe not for the better.

I understood the main story and what was happening. The subplot of the movie is what threw me off. I thought the secondary plot was a bit messy but yet still engaging.

The acting in this movie was excellent. I think Ben Affleck as Christan Wolff is the best character he's ever played. Affleck's performance is both engaging and mesmerizing. Everyone does their job here, but Affleck steals the show.

The violence feels ultra realistic. I love action movies, but none have felt as real as this in a long time. When The Accountant kills people, he kills people, and it's not pretty.

There's a lot of jump cutting that's present here. This movie constantly jumps from the past to the present without warning, but the transitions are fluid.

The execution of the story at times feels tedious due to its consistent jump cutting, multi-layered plot, and abundance of characters.

Each character gets their moment, and everyone plays a part, but it's the coincidence that brings them all together.

I think this movie is trying to be more than what it is, and it succeeds. The Accountant movie has a multi-layered engaging main plot about mental illness in young children and how they cope with their situations. The secondary plot is about The Accountant doing business with the wrong people. There's another plot to this movie with J.K Simmons and his story's compelling, but it lacks conviction.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie. The fight scenes and choreography were breathtaking. The main plot was engaging. Ben Affleck delivered the best performance of his career. Every actor played their part. This movie suffers from sensory overload, but regardless, I believe that it will stimulate not only intellectuals but white-knuckled action junkies as well. The main plot, Ben Affleck, and the violence is ferocious.

Final Grade: A-

A thriller should be entertaining and smart, both of which The Accountant is. Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is not Christian in the traditional sense, but he is a wolf of a hunter, about as accurate as anyone behind a telescopic gun barrel could be.

Yet he's a brilliant accountant at the same time, thank you, autism: He has a savant's grasp of facts and numbers (think Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man) but a serious deficiency in the affective and communicative categories. Affleck plays him with a grasp of disaffection that is almost humorous, in fact is with some of his straight-arrow responses: "I don't guess," he says when queried if he had a hunch about the perpetrator of a fraud.

You see, he is hired by all kinds of wealthy and criminal business people and governments to uncook their books or whatever is necessary to discover fraud or put the books in order. These jobs lead to situations where he is wanted by bad guys or the IRS or whomever. Wolff's legitimate, current job for a robotics company is complicated enough for him to need several glass walls to write on (think Affleck's buddy Mark Damon in Good Will Hunting), taking in hours what would consume days for a host of professional accountants.

And so it goes according to the thriller formula that the bad guys will be on his trail, and he will be made vulnerable by a cute co-worker, Dana (Anna Kendrick), who has some of his math savvy and maybe a bit of sweet for him. The Accountant veers from formula because that romance is of the "chaste-and-from-afar" kind, almost but not quite at the kiss stage. It's pleasant not to be bothered by heavy sex when the complications are of the cerebral, themselves the core of pleasure in this brainy, but not too, action drama.

Unfortunately our autistic hero, trained by a merciless military father to defend himself because dad knew son would always be treated as different, slips into thriller stereotype, e.g. Christian puts down too many hired guns at one time, albeit in the service of a noble retaliation for a prison friend. Although the action is within the parameters of the genre, it here feels overdone given the cerebral contexts that otherwise provide plenty of thrills.

One of the joys of this film is to see Affleck show some acting chops; he may never be like Dustin Hoffman, but he's memorably stoic here, a long way from J.Lo and Gigli.

Wow.......

It is always pleasant to go into a movie with no expectations, and this one delivered in spades.

Any story starts with... well a great story, and this is it, although somewhat predictable it's more a comforting predictable, a good guy wins story with enough great twists in it to keep the interest.

The cast here lifts the game, who knew Affleck had this in him, and supported by the ever sweet Kendrick (all be it with a kick-ass moment), and throw in favorites like Simmons (Terminator Genisys) and Addai-Robinson (Shooter), all playing their respective parts well.

The scene with Affleck's and Kendrick's characters having lunch showed great subtly in writing, directing and acting. A lot of dry and subtle humor throughout.

No overdone CGI either, just good clean action, regularly punctuating the plot, with the clean cinematography only adding to clinical nature of our lead character.

For the run-of-the-mill action flick, you shouldn't pass this one up.

Being on the autism spectrum myself, I took a special interest in "The Accountant". Mind you, the movie isn't about autism. The protagonist is a mildly autistic man (Ben Affleck) who does accounting work for a number of vile people. It isn't long before there's a hit out on him.

A lot of the movie gets complicated from the number of characters. It apparently drew controversy for the depiction of autism (much like how "Rain Man" now draws controversy). Even so, I liked the complexity that they gave Affleck's character; his narrow focuses were accurate for autism. In the end, it's not a great movie, but a clever one. Affleck's performance, plus those of Anna Kendrick, John Lithgow, J. K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal and others make this worth seeing.