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Solve All Of Life’s Puzzles With ‘The Accountant’ (Movie Review)

The Accountant makes for a stupid film title in my opinion.  I don’t care how good the movie is, I still hate the name given.  I probably couldn’t come up with anything better, but that’s why I am writing movie reviews and not films themselves.  However, you can’t say it doesn’t grab your attention.  Come on!  I don’t know about you, but my mind strays to thoughts of how boring this flick can be.  I can’t help it.  I’m high maintenance and like my lifestyle I want a zinger of a movie title to accompany the features I adore.  Whoa!  Stop the press!  This one stars Ben Affleck!  The man brought Batman back to life.  You can Argo F yourselves.  He deserves our undivided attention.  So listen up as here comes the 4-1-1 on The Accountant.

The Accountant is an action thriller film directed by Gavin O’Connor, written by Bill Dubuque.  It stars Ben “Batman” Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Tambor, Cynthia Addai-Robinson and John Lithgow.  I don’t know about you, but those are some heavy hitting names to me.  What’s even more heavy hitting is the film’s premise.  In this story our so called “accountant,” Christian Wolff (Affleck), uses a small town CPA office as his cover.  In actuality, he really makes his living as a forensic accountant for dangerous criminal organizations, hence all those espionage looking commercials and you’ve seen thus far.

So this one is hard to tackle without ruining for you.  It’s simplistic in nature, but there are a few interesting puzzle pieces to find along the way.  That’s why I really like it too.  My girlfriend said it best when she coined the phrase “The Accountant was like the perfect puzzle.  All the pieces fit together by the end.”  I’m not going to lie.  I prefer to walk out of movie that leaves you thinking about it thought provokingly, but also has a definite resolve to it all too.  Those are the kind of films I need no sequels to as I just just appreciate them more as a standalone entry into a huge movie universe.  However, given how much I liked The Accountant, I can definitely see others wanting more of this titular character akin to how people went nuts over John Wick.

So who is Ben Affleck in this film?  The real question should be who isn’t he.  He can be anybody, but we mostly know him by the name of Christian Wolff.  Needless to say he’s an accountant.  And like most of them, he gets along better with numbers than people.  He’s socially awkward, but there’s a reason for it and I’m not going to spoil it for you here.   He does booking and what not for some very dangerous clients and I guess you can say uses his small-town CPA office, Z Z Z Accounting, as a cover.  Ironically, Christian picks his next client to be what he thought a legitimate client, a robotics company that specializes in prosthetics.  He figures this is safe.  However, as he starts to uncover the truth the body counts rise.  He’s abruptly stopped and because of his nature he can’t quit (another spoiler as to why I can’t reveal the reason of his compulsion).

Meanwhile, a US Treasury agent coming upon retirement, Ray King (Simmons), soon is hot on Christian’s trail.  We learn their paths have crossed before and he’s very keen on discovering who “the accountant” is.  I say accountant here because no one knows his real name.  I told you it was Christian, but that does not mean the characters in the film know that.  I do my best to preserve the mystery.  So that’s down on her luck, how up and coming treasury agent Cynthia Addai-Robinson’s gets involved in the man hunt.  She’s tasked with finding out who the accountant is.  I got to hand it to her, she’s a lot smarter than she looks.  Then there’s the flip side of it all here, John Bernthal’s character known as Brax.  Have you seen Sicario?  With the exception of an important factor his character feels so similar in this one.  Those are just the major players ladies and gentlemen.  Underneath it all you have a tale of financial corruption, a government manhunt and even some serious underlying family drama to contend with here.

I guess I did forget one other player, Miss Anna Kendrick.  She’s an odd one in this.  She feels as socially introverted as Christian, but really isn’t.  However, she’s important to the story as she propels some of the course of action our protagonist chooses.  That’s all I’ll say on that, but I did bring her up for a reason in this paragraph.  The scenes she shares with Ben are probably some of my favorite ones.  The tender awkwardness between the pair made for not only a lot of laughs, but also some really cute moments.  Speaking of cute, I used that word to describe this film to a co-worker the next day.  He nearly flipped his lid.  Relax.  I went on to tell him it was a good flick with a solid resolve, not rushed just done right.

The Accountant for me was a well crafted thriller, albeit a quiet one.  You’ll get what I mean by that when you see it, but for me the fun was both peeling back the layers, putting the pieces together and enjoying the hell out of Affleck’s performance.  It should at least tide people over until next year’s Justice League when we get to see him kick more butt.  However, I did say quiet didn’t I?  I mean it as a term of endurance and for the patience required, but when the action kicks in it moves really swift just like John Wick.  There’s a lot of similarities between the two pics, but the exception being Wick isn’t an introvert and his story is pretty linear.  Like I said up above, The Accountant is more like a puzzle that you put together.  The good thing about it is by the end you’ll find out not only do you have all the pieces, but also they fit so perfectly well together.  The performances are great, the action is fresh and the narrative’s not dumb.  What more can you ask for?  A brilliant resolve you have!

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The Accountant

Solves Math Equations Everywhere

Oct. 14th

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