The Accountant ***½ (2016, Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal) – Movie Review

Director Gavin O’Connor’s 2016 crime action drama is distinctly odd and a bit patchy, but it is definitely intriguing, interesting and entertaining overall.

Ben Affleck stars in a grim, literally monotonous performance as The Accountant – that’s no criticism as that is exactly the role as written by Bill Dubuque (The Judge). Affleck is ideal. Yet the movie is a rickety ride. It regularly stalls and sometimes seems to be about to collapse. But it somehow keeps on track and gets to its final destination.

Affleck plays an autistic loner maths genius Christian Wolff employed to sort out a mess with the accounting for his new client Lamar Black (John Lithgow). But the about-to-retire Ray King at Treasury Department wants to solve the Christian Wolff case before he retires – he has his reasons, of course – and with the help of new recruit Marybeth Medina Cynthia Addai-Robinson), closes in on Wolff’s activities.

But naturally there’s more to accountant Christian Wolff than meets the eye, and, as the layers of his life are unpeeled, the current body count rises dramatically, as a man named Brax (Jon Bernthal) is also on the accountant’s case and wasting the landscape. Meanwhile, Christian Wolff gets to meet Lamar Black’s accountant Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick) and weirdly mellows, becomes human, well a little bit anyway. Affleck and Kendrick make a very unusual romantic pair, but this is a very unusual romance in a very unusual film. So that’s OK, then.

Going for weird and oddball is dangerous in big budget movie making, but here it mostly pays off. Some of it is a bit daft, but, though it might be about an accountant, it is not movie making by numbers. The tense, exciting scenes pile up with the bodies, and soon starting outnumbering the dull, borderline boring ones. It’s a shame there are some duff lines in the script, too, but they don’t eclipse many good ones. The performances are generally very good, raising the movie’s level, especially the reliable and invaluable Kendrick and Simmons, who can always come up with something to brighten dull patches in films.

By the end, and after two hours and ten minutes, it all comes together, and you leave satisfied, impressed even, wondering why you found it a bit plodding earlier on. Now it seems good enough for a sequel, a franchise ever, Affleck’s rival to his pal Matt Damon’s Bourne franchise. Seriously, we may not have heard the last of Christian Wolff.

Gavin O’Connor’s last film was the underrated Jane Got a Gun.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

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