The Accountant

Wow.......

It is always pleasant to go into a movie with no expectations, and this one delivered in spades.

Any story starts with... well a great story, and this is it, although somewhat predictable it's more a comforting predictable, a good guy wins story with enough great twists in it to keep the interest.

The cast here lifts the game, who knew Affleck had this in him, and supported by the ever sweet Kendrick (all be it with a kick-ass moment), and throw in favorites like Simmons (Terminator Genisys) and Addai-Robinson (Shooter), all playing their respective parts well.

The scene with Affleck's and Kendrick's characters having lunch showed great subtly in writing, directing and acting. A lot of dry and subtle humor throughout.

No overdone CGI either, just good clean action, regularly punctuating the plot, with the clean cinematography only adding to clinical nature of our lead character.

For the run-of-the-mill action flick, you shouldn't pass this one up.

A thriller should be entertaining and smart, both of which The Accountant is. Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is not Christian in the traditional sense, but he is a wolf of a hunter, about as accurate as anyone behind a telescopic gun barrel could be.

Yet he's a brilliant accountant at the same time, thank you, autism: He has a savant's grasp of facts and numbers (think Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man) but a serious deficiency in the affective and communicative categories. Affleck plays him with a grasp of disaffection that is almost humorous, in fact is with some of his straight-arrow responses: "I don't guess," he says when queried if he had a hunch about the perpetrator of a fraud.

You see, he is hired by all kinds of wealthy and criminal business people and governments to uncook their books or whatever is necessary to discover fraud or put the books in order. These jobs lead to situations where he is wanted by bad guys or the IRS or whomever. Wolff's legitimate, current job for a robotics company is complicated enough for him to need several glass walls to write on (think Affleck's buddy Mark Damon in Good Will Hunting), taking in hours what would consume days for a host of professional accountants.

And so it goes according to the thriller formula that the bad guys will be on his trail, and he will be made vulnerable by a cute co-worker, Dana (Anna Kendrick), who has some of his math savvy and maybe a bit of sweet for him. The Accountant veers from formula because that romance is of the "chaste-and-from-afar" kind, almost but not quite at the kiss stage. It's pleasant not to be bothered by heavy sex when the complications are of the cerebral, themselves the core of pleasure in this brainy, but not too, action drama.

Unfortunately our autistic hero, trained by a merciless military father to defend himself because dad knew son would always be treated as different, slips into thriller stereotype, e.g. Christian puts down too many hired guns at one time, albeit in the service of a noble retaliation for a prison friend. Although the action is within the parameters of the genre, it here feels overdone given the cerebral contexts that otherwise provide plenty of thrills.

One of the joys of this film is to see Affleck show some acting chops; he may never be like Dustin Hoffman, but he's memorably stoic here, a long way from J.Lo and Gigli.

This film is utterly incredible. The acting is amazing, I loved the plot, the action was brilliant. As a person with autism I can say that Affleck portrayed autism perfectly, I don't understand why this film gets so much controversy. Every person with autism is different and acts different to one another. I never liked action films before this but this film is just so amazing and original that I came to like action films. I have watched this so many times and never get bored of it. I hope the sequel is as good as this, love to see more films like this. Would definitely recommend this film to anyone, no matter what genre they prefer. 10/10.

One of the qualities I apply to my rating metric is this: Will I watch this more than once? And how many times? That's one of the reasons I rated this a seven.

I've watched this film multiple times. Yes, I like most of the fight scenes and set pieces.

But what I found myself drawn to is the character story of the protagonist, Christian Wolf (Ben Affleck). Some of the editing, particularly loading the treasury agent's (J. K. Simmons) "come to Jesus" moment, is not sequenced right. But the puzzle of how a gifted savant becomes a skilled combatant, and how it ties to a treasury agent, who then draws in a mentee (Cynthia Addis-Robinson as Marybeth Medina), is intriguing.

It helps the film immensely that there are so many accomplished performers, Lithgow, Kendrick, Affleck, Bernthal, Simmons, Tambor, Smart and very good secondary performances as well.

Of course the mechanics of how the neuro atypical "woman in the chair" became that person for our anti-hero is a stretch, but I liked the surprise.

I'll definitely watch this again, most likely after the sequel starts streaming, and then watch them back to back.

Highly recommend.

When - 8:00 PM Where - Max With Who - Myself

Second Thoughts - I thoroughly enjoy this movie every time I watch it. This might be one of my favorite Ben Affleck performances honestly. I love how this movie brings attention to those living with autism not as victims, but as those the world just doesn't understand yet. Yes, it does turn Affleck's character's autism to fit the plot as the infamous Accountant, but it doesn't look down on or make fun of those who are autistic. Anna Kendrick is very charming in her role, and although he's not in it much, Jon Bernthal gives a passionate performance as always.

They do a good job of splitting the story between the Accountant and him dealing with his enemies threatening him and Kendrick's character, and the Treasury Department agents trying to figure out who he is. The fight scenes are pretty well choreographed, it's a lot of fun to see an emotionless Affleck just destroy bad guys in various ways Overall, an enjoyable film that is an easy rewatch. Im looking forward to the second movie.