The Accountant Review
Ben Affleck is having a heck of a year. First, he’s the best part of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), then we hear his next directing effort, Live by Night, makes the qualifying run it needs to be in the Oscar race, and now he stars in Gavin O’Connor’s latest, The Accountant. He’s joined by a pretty talented cast including Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Tambor, and John Lithgow, and the result is a pretty solid action-thriller, though there are a couple of objections I have here and there that prevent it from being a stand-out this year.
The plot basically follows Affleck as Christian Wolff, who from outside appearances is simply an accountant in a Chicago suburb. However, we soon see there’s more to him than meets the eye. He is also a crack-shot who can hit targets from a mile out and is also trained in hand-to-hand combat. He’s basically Jason Bourne who can do math, too. That’s an intriguing concept, and Gavin O’Connor gives it his all. As the movie continues, Christian takes on a job for a robotics industry who thinks there’s missing money. However, before he can complete the job to his satisfaction, he and one of his clients is targeted by contracted killers, as well as a new friend of his, Dana, played by Kendrick. He goes to rescue her and try and find the person who hired the killers. So yeah, that’s a pretty simple plot, and what makes movies with this simplistic a story better is if there’s interesting characters, exciting action scenes, or some stylistic choices or story decisions that hold our interest. The Accountant succeeds because we enjoy watching Christian work, both as an accountant and as a human weapon. We enjoy his back-and-forth with Dana, and the action scenes are well-executed and fun to watch. There aren’t, however, too many stylistic or story choices, though. So while the movie doesn’t have everything, it’s got enough to keep it good.
The one element I haven’t discussed yet is how J.K. Simmons as the head of the Treasury department figures into this. Well, if you want the honest truth, its because he doesn’t, really. He tells a fellow agent that he’s been following Christian’s trail for years but has never found out who he really is or how to arrest him. However, once the other agent does start to get hot on the trail, we learn in an extended explanation scene with J.K. that he really just wants to know to know. This isn’t a spoiler in my opinion, but for whatever reason, they decide not to try and stop him or arrest him, even though he has committed murder and falsely reported financial prospects in the past. So why add thirty minutes onto the movie just to let J.K. Simmons tell a story? Really was no point to it, and there’s another reveal about the Jon Bernthal character later on which doesn’t add anything, and I personally had an idea of what it would be before it was revealed. Really these are my big two criticisms: it’s a little over two hours for basically no reason other than having some filler that doesn’t add anything to the story of character of Christian, and the big twist was pretty predictable. These aren’t enough to disable the film’s good standing, and like I said, there’s enough interest in the character of Christian and his occupations and his relationships with the other characters that prevent the film from being ruined by these not so great factors.
If you want to count Lights Out (2016) and Don’t Breathe as thrillers, then 2016 has been blessed with many great ones, and The Accountant is in that same ballpark. Again, Affleck is enjoyable, and his performance is a good one. Christian suffers from a form of autism, one that I personally can’t remember if they specified or not, but that’s an interesting addition that makes the movie stand out a bit above the average thriller. I remember before the first ads came out and we had the basic title and cast, and I thought it’d be just a drama about Affleck and Kendrick being accountants that are working on a case or something and it’s up to them to save a company or something, and remember being a bit disappointed when I found out it was an action-thriller and not a straight drama. But the film proved me wrong. Not every straight drama is successful, true, but as an action-thriller The Accountant still works. Not one of the year’s best, but a nice Friday night popcorn movie that makes you think a little bit, but doesn’t rely on you paying attention to every last word that’s spoken. Every once in a while, you need a movie like that to break up the routine, especially in the at times cerebral Oscar thinking-man movies. I’d say it’s actually a nice companion piece to Arrival, which I happened to see in the same day, and after Arrival had me all confused, The Accountant had a little brains and plenty of braun to balance me out. It’s nothing special, but good in all the ways that count.
My rating: 8/10.
