The Accountant

Being on the autism spectrum myself, I took a special interest in "The Accountant". Mind you, the movie isn't about autism. The protagonist is a mildly autistic man (Ben Affleck) who does accounting work for a number of vile people. It isn't long before there's a hit out on him.

A lot of the movie gets complicated from the number of characters. It apparently drew controversy for the depiction of autism (much like how "Rain Man" now draws controversy). Even so, I liked the complexity that they gave Affleck's character; his narrow focuses were accurate for autism. In the end, it's not a great movie, but a clever one. Affleck's performance, plus those of Anna Kendrick, John Lithgow, J. K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal and others make this worth seeing.

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.

The accountant is an action, crime drama film . directed by Gavin O'connor and starring: Ben Affleck at the leading role.

Story line :

the story is about a mental calculator who works as forensic accountant tracking insider financial deception for numerous criminal enterprises brought to him by an unknown women voice on his phone.

Review :

to me this was by far one of the best films that were released last year, it is not an Oscar film but it is a good one with great acting performance from Ben Affleck, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, J.K. Simmons and Anna kendrick.

Affleck's performance here's one of his best next to his amazing role in Gone Girl 2014 (which i highly recommend you to watch), he really brought to the character everything and show to us how people with autism live.

the action scenes are the soul of the film, i enjoyed them very much especially ben's head shots they were very funny and enjoyable and his fighting skills were really amazing( i just which they had put a little more action to this film, but i guess due to the flashback scenes and the difficult story it would have become too difficult to focus.

As for the brother role it was OK in the flash back but when it came to present time it was a little bit bad and the reason of it is choosing an actor who is totally different in race and physic and i just kept looking at him wondering what the hell they were thinking when they chose him to play the role (even his body figure was totally different from the child's body!) for me that was the only bad thing in this film.

Final rate :

8 out of 10

Gavin O'Connor, the director of my favorite movie Warrior. Ben Affleck, the once ridiculed but now stupendous entertainer. J.K. Simmons, the distinguished actor from Whiplash. Jon Bernthal, the rising star from The Walking Dead who's a known but yet still unknown actor, and he's great by the way. John Lithgow, an actor who delivers uncanny especially when he's the villain. Bill Dubuque, who the hell is this guy, but he wrote this movie, and this appears to be his first major project besides Robert Downey Jr's The Judge. I enjoy all of these people's work one way or another. This movie has a good director, good leading man, and an all-star cast. From the trailers, this movie seemed like an intellectual movie about a young boy growing up with mental problems, the boy grows up and becomes an accountant, through his work he does business with shady characters, for some reason his clients want him dead, but we know The Accountant is far more capable of much more than they know. I was anticipating this movie based on all the information I just provided. I thought this movie couldn't miss. Is The Accountant a good movie? The Accountant is a good movie.

The direction of this seems rather simple, but as the story progresses, things become a bit too complicated, and maybe not for the better.

I understood the main story and what was happening. The subplot of the movie is what threw me off. I thought the secondary plot was a bit messy but yet still engaging.

The acting in this movie was excellent. I think Ben Affleck as Christan Wolff is the best character he's ever played. Affleck's performance is both engaging and mesmerizing. Everyone does their job here, but Affleck steals the show.

The violence feels ultra realistic. I love action movies, but none have felt as real as this in a long time. When The Accountant kills people, he kills people, and it's not pretty.

There's a lot of jump cutting that's present here. This movie constantly jumps from the past to the present without warning, but the transitions are fluid.

The execution of the story at times feels tedious due to its consistent jump cutting, multi-layered plot, and abundance of characters.

Each character gets their moment, and everyone plays a part, but it's the coincidence that brings them all together.

I think this movie is trying to be more than what it is, and it succeeds. The Accountant movie has a multi-layered engaging main plot about mental illness in young children and how they cope with their situations. The secondary plot is about The Accountant doing business with the wrong people. There's another plot to this movie with J.K Simmons and his story's compelling, but it lacks conviction.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie. The fight scenes and choreography were breathtaking. The main plot was engaging. Ben Affleck delivered the best performance of his career. Every actor played their part. This movie suffers from sensory overload, but regardless, I believe that it will stimulate not only intellectuals but white-knuckled action junkies as well. The main plot, Ben Affleck, and the violence is ferocious.

Final Grade: A-

Before today I saw The Accountant in the theater and I wasn't reviewing back then so here I am. Such a great movie about a wonderfully unique being that is very good at many meticulous details such as mathematics, his work really well and mysterious things. Incredible performances from everyone and well written I'm surprised it wasn't nominated a few years ago! Warms my heart to relate to things, glad I own this amazing film in 4K!