The Accountant – Film Review by Pat V.

Director: Gavin O’Connor
Writer: Bill Dubuque
Stars: Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons

If you’re looking for a couple of hours’ mindless entertainment, you could do a lot worse than to go to Gavin O’Connor’s new movie starring Ben Affleck and Anna Kendrick. It’s an enjoyable and slightly off-beat action thriller with all the usual ingredients and then some. Maybe mindless isn’t the best word to describe it as, with so many twists and turns, you will need to concentrate to the very last frame to make full sense of this film.

The story centres round a small town forensic accountant, Christian Wolff, (played by Affleck),  who specialises in sorting out financial problems for international criminal gangs. In addition to his accounting skills, he shoots, strangles and batters the bad guys around him, always coming away unscathed. Like a James Bond or Jack Reacher with autism,  he seems to leave a swathe of dead bodies behind him everywhere he goes, though, unlike them, his condition leaves him unable to form any form of intimate relationship with the people around him. His assignments are organised by an anonymous telephone caller, known only as The Voice, and Wolff receives his payment in cash, gold bars or works of art which he keeps in an Airstream trailer in a storage locker ready for a quick getaway.

When the director of financial crimes at the Treasury Department (J K Simmons) starts to investigate some of Wolff’s past activities, The Voice arranges a legal assignment for him. He is sent to investigate a suspected embezzlement at Living Robotics,  a corporation specialising in the manufacture of prosthetic limbs, whose in-house accountant, Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick), has found suspicious financial discrepancies. This proves to be a lot more dangerous than his previous criminal activities and is followed by general mayhem and more dead bodies littering the stage than the last act of Hamlet.

With flashbacks to Wolff’s childhood and the harsh upbringing at the hands of his father who feels he must toughen his son to deal with a world he does not easily fit into, the portrayal of autism in this film stretches credulity to its very limit.  Though parents of a child with autism are told by a therapist, “Your son’s not less than. He’s different.”, the condition is presented in the realms of a super-power. Wolff not only solves any mathematical problem in less than a micro-second, he also seems oblivious to pain, can hit a target at a distance of more than a mile and can outrun, outfight and outshoot everyone he comes in contact with.

The performances are all watchable. Anna Kendrick is her usual perky, engaging self and adds a touch of wit to the story while John Lithgow and Jon Bernthal are convincing and suitably sinister. Ben Affleck, however, steals the show. Whether he is helping rural Illinois couples escape economic woes through clever tax preparation or dispatching his enemies with a neat bullet through the head, his portrayal of Wolff is always captivating.

The Accountant may not be memorable, but if you’re partial to a fast-paced, multi-layered, action thriller with a flawed hero, a damsel in distress, car chases and a high body count, this is probably the best show in town!