The Accountant review – a surprisingly effective action thriller

‘As a genius accountant un-cooks the books for a new client the body count starts to rise.’

With a title like The Accountant, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’re about to go and see a hard core drama about banking, similar to last years The Big Short (2015), but actually, Gavin O’ Conner latest film is clearly more an action thriller. Also, after seeing best friend Matt Damon doing it for years, Ben Affleck follows suit and plays the titular character, a reluctant hero with neurological issues yet can somehow take down a small army all on his own.

Whereas Jason Bourne suffered with amnesia though, Affleck’s Christian Wolff struggles with a form of High Functioning Autism with the side effects of poor social skills, an obsessive compulsive disorder, and that age old movie tradition of being a math’s genius – see Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man (1988).

Although not an original idea to explore in film, Bill Dubuque’s script does add some freshness to the plot by giving Christian a back story where he and his brother were raised by their military father, who instead of seeking professional help with his son, decides the best way to deal with Christian’s condition is to channel it through extensive military training, including hand-to-hand combat and sharp shooting. Combined with his skills with numbers, he becomes an accountant for various criminal organisations.

When Director of Financial Crimes Raymond King (J. K. Simmons) begins closing in on him though, he takes on a legitimate client in the form of a robotics company only to find that comes with its own complications, including fellow accountant Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick). He soon finds himself having to put those more deadlier skills in practice when he’s targeted by a group of mercenaries led by Jo Bernthal’s assassin.

It all sounds overly complicated, and sadly, it is. As interesting and filled with potential the narrative is, the execution is rather messy. Instead of a tightly scripted story it could have been, we have a hard to follow plot that feels all over the place and is trying to balance to many plate’s at once, which include regular flashback scenes to fill in Christian’s childhood, character threads that are picked up and dropped with very little explanation, and a couple of third act reveals that borderline on the ridiculous.

Despite the messy plot, what keeps The Accountant from being a complete disaster, fortunately, is some well executed action scenes, and an excellent performance from Affleck. He gives Christian just the right amount of sympathy and empathy that we can root and care for him as the hero, and although I’m no expert on autism, he doesn’t over play it and injects enough humanity into his performance that he doesn’t come off as a complete robot. He’s also putting that Batman training to good use and proves he can make for a convincing action hero as he pummels and beats his way through the various goons who want to see him dead.

Regrettably, the same can’t be said for the rest of the cast, and with the exception of maybe J. K. Simmons, who musters as much pathos as he can with the thinly sketched King, everyone else is underused and underdeveloped, which is a shame considering the calibre of the cast.

Anna Kendrick is also wasted and given very little to do except to be the damsel in distress and give Christian someone to care about (although they play off each other quite well in the few scenes they do have together, and bring some much needed lighter moments).

‘Let down by an out of control plot and poor character development, The Accountant clearly isn’t going to win action film of the year.’

What it does have though is a great performance from Affleck and some well-directed action set pieces, making it an adequate action thriller, with just enough going for it to entertain for a couple of hours.