If you're not a fan of Ben Affleck's stony-faced acting, you're going to hate this movie. If you, like me, don't mind it so much, you're going to be okay with this movie. If you like movies that don't really make sense, overreach their goals, and overstay their welcome, then this flick is all for you!
The Accountant looked like a potentially solid crime thriller and Oscar-bait for Affleck, who plays an autistic public accountant who moonlights as, well, another accountant for criminal enterprises seeking internal leaks. Affleck's committed performance is admirable; the rest of the film is not. Actually, it's a bit of a mess. While I enjoyed Bill Dubuque's script in The Judge (2014), I did not here. Most of its half-baked ideas could work if there weren't so many and if they all fit into the same story. I'd argue that the only reason to go see the film is in its heartfelt intention to provide a badass leading action man who happens to be autistic. And that is more than enough reason to go watch, by the way. It's just too bad that character wasn't in a better film.
The cast is lovely, but almost all of them are criminally underused. Anna Kendrick plays your basic damsel in distress, Jeffrey Tambor and John Lithgow are almost absent entirely, which begs the question why they are even involved. JK Simmons is given some nice screen time -- which of course he steals -- and Jon Bernthal masterfully commands the film's climax. The fight choreography is rather lovely, and a few of the action scenes are handled with entrancing skill by the cinematographer and editor. Not much else in The Accountant works. Not even its title.
And it's not all the writer's fault, as director Gavin O'Connor flies along without focus. Fleeting images and time lapses provide little more than a vague overview of the entire lifespan of our protagonist, making what should be a taut thriller about one particular case into a lengthy, vague origin story for what seems to be a potential franchise. Actually, more than once I wondered if I was watching an alternate-universe origin story for Batffleck. The only thing that brought me back from that dark precipice was the film's constant cliche-mongering. Cliches of disabilities lead to cliches of leading men in a cliched action plot, and all those cliches swim around in their own stew until about halfway through the film, when the plot finally begins to coalesce into a preachy cliche about embracing differences especially in your own family.
Maybe I'm just bitter because I wanted it to be better. But its hypocritical condescension and irritating banality make the film one of the biggest disappointments of the year.
IMDb: The Accountant
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