Review: 'The Accountant' adds up to intriguing action
Ben Affleck brings needed nuance to old-fashioned brains and brawn as an action hero with high-functioning autism in The Accountant.
Directed by Gavin O’Connor (Warrior), the thriller (*** out of four; rated R; in theaters nationwide Friday) lets Affleck showcase the same physicality he has as Hollywood's Batman, though math savant Christian Wolff is a different kind of dark knight. He's a good-hearted guy who hires himself out to the shadiest groups on the planet, but his complex character motivations aren’t quite as simple.
Chris is a riddle wrapped in an enigma: He shows little emotion but is extremely honest in doing his work efficiently and quietly. The guy hides in plain sight as an ordinary buttoned-up CPA but has a whole secret life, from his criminal clientele to the Airstream trailer that holds his most prized possessions (among them, an original Jackson Pollock painting and a lightsaber signed by George Lucas).
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At his newest gig at a high-profile robotics company, his reserved and stoic manner stymies junior accountant Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick). She’s the one who found the financial inconsistency that led to tech bigwig Lamar Black (John Lithgow) hiring Chris to uncook his books and figure out what happened, but Chris’ discoveries end up putting both him and Dana in danger. Luckily, Chris is a crack shot, boasts bone-breaking fighting skills and has a mean protective streak.
Other characters find themselves on a collision course with Chris’ life: Treasury agent Marybeth Madina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) is tasked by her boss (J.K. Simmons) to find the mysterious accountant, while the hitman Brax (Jon Bernthal) leaves a trail of bodies in his wake while targeting Dana.
Pretty much everybody has a whole host of secrets, most of which are frustratingly backloaded. Even the reasoning behind why the otherwise heroic Chris cozies up to some seriously bad people makes a certain amount of sense yet leaves the viewer a little conflicted about him as a true good guy.
O’Connor creates some intriguing action scenes and captures nice chemistry between his two math-loving main characters and the couple of feds especially. But where The Accountant really succeeds is exploring the emotions and coping mechanisms of a protagonist on the autism spectrum, plot points not often seen in the macho action genre.
Chris’ origin story is shown through flashbacks and they involve a scene that parents of developmentally challenged children will find relatable. Young Chris is taken to a New England neuroscience center, where he meets a doctor who doesn’t want to put a label on the child’s autism, and the father worries — though not in the most positive fashion — about how it will affect the rest of his boy’s life.
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Affleck’s performance is action-packed but also utilizes his acting chops to present Chris' engaging grown-up idiosyncrasies, including his daily regimen of heavy metal and Zoloft, the way he blows on his hands before he eats and the overall over-organization of his life.
When he has to go on the run, Chris makes sure to take his ultra-valuable Superman comic book — picking up a Batman issue would have been too on the nose — and while trivial in one sense, it’s also an important nod to the hero he yearns to be. Little details like that in The Accountant add up to Affleck and company being the right folks for this job.