Director: Gavin O'Connor
By Alex Watson
While The Accountant does have stretches where it succeeds as a straight thriller, its underdeveloped story, and misjudged feel are sorely lacking tension. Ben Affleck gives a committed performance, but even he cannot rise to give this movie the dramatic touch it badly needs. Director Gavin O'Connor seems to want to create some sort of autistic superhero and due to a ham-handed backstory for the character and its tendency to gloss over key character points leave us with a lack of empathy.
Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is a math savant who runs a small accounting practice, but his work is a mere front for his work does illegally accounting for some the world's most dangerous people. When he is recruited work for a big robotics firm run by Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow) he uncovers a significant amount of money going missing. During this time he comes across pretty accountant Dana (Anna Kendrick) and he is also been chased by Treasury agent Ray King (J.K Simmons). Where does the trail lead? The answer to that will involve bodies stacking up.
O'Connor seems unsure about what way he wants to take The Accountant because it starts with some intriguing mystery as we see King talking to a colleague about this mystery figure who traces missing money for the baddies. Christian is a character who is very much a loner and to the films credit it does get a lot of details right about his condition as he doesn't like eye contact, has problems with social cues and is prone to fits of anger when he cannot finish something. What it loses points on is the depiction of his martial arts upbringing by his high ranking army father who groomed him from a young to be some kind of superhero. Also immediately, O'Connor throws believability out of the window when it is revealed that also his hideouts are filled the brim with all the latest fancy weaponry and he can drop everything and move within minutes.
The main problem is that so much of story feels confused and not much makes sense. At the centre is a potentially interesting story of corporate corruption, sadly due to a poor script by Bill Dubuque, motivations are confused and the plot becomes muddled from there. It seems like O'Connor is more interested in letting the bodies hit the floor that really explaining what is happening to his audience. Dana is a character that although introduced as the sweet romantic relief, is drastically underwritten to the point of being unnecessary. There is zero chemistry alongside Christian and the sloppy romance approach just feels awkward and unreal. His motivation for wanting to see her live is completely glossed over and seems like an eleventh-hour story addition. Similarly ill-explained are the intentions of mysterious man Braxton (John Bernthal) who goes from place to place makes bizarre threats but not clueing us into the bigger picture.
A clumsy and mismatched ending with some predictable twists is also a big problem for The Accountant as things come full circle. What could have been a cold-blooded and remorseless finale is fumbled at the one-yard line by O'Connor who tries to add a comedic touch. Throughout we see Christian take aim with his huge sniper rifle and emotionlessly kill any number of hitmen with a brutal efficiency. While the final moments do so his great killing ability it just feels a flavorless and dull end to this journey which doesn't bring its audience much joy. Its focus on how autistic are just people and capable of being stone cold killers feels like a big misjudgment when the story alone of Christian being the man who goes where the average fears to tread would have been fascinating alone. Gavin O'Connor has made some good films, Miracle and Warrior showed the bonds of brotherhood well, his thriller credentials remain in the balance.
Ben Affleck does his best to bring Christian to life and on some levels, he does succeed because he handles the little details of his diagnosis well. His portrayal of this character as some kind of weapons Superman leaves his character feeling mismatched and he is never really able to recover from this tailspin. There are solid supporting turns for Anna Kendrick, J.K Simmons, and John Lithgow, but none really has much to work with and for a cast of this caliber they feel stranded in a weak story line.
The Accountant is a thriller that could well have had more merits, but instead, the audience will have to stick to playing count the body numbers.
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