The Accountant. Gavin O’Connor, dir. I generally find the pretty-boy half of the Affleck/Damon duo (Good Will Hunting) overrated as an actor and a bad role model for all his philandering, so I was surprised when Ben Affleck as creative accountant Christian Wolff did a pretty good job in this movie. His highly functional autistic character, a money-manager for several criminal concerns, comes across as almost believable in this movie, but I’d like to hear what experts say. Like Rainman, Wolff is intensely focused and very good with numbers; unlike Rainman, Wolff had an Army father with a broomstick up his butt who thought the only way his son could protect himself from those who considered him different and bullied him was to beat the crap out of them. His brother Brax, played well as an adult by Jon Bernthal, is also a victim of his father who cares too much about his father’s treatment of Christian. In this sense, this movie can be seen as a general indictment against parents who end up destroying their children’s lives, and not just children with special needs.

There are several characters who are superfluous here. First, consider Treasury agents Ray King (played by J. K. Simmons) and Marybeth Medina (played by Cynthia Addai-Robinson)—I’d write one of these two out of the script. Medina is a token black good character (Hollywood’s answer to the Oscars fiasco?) where Hollywood couldn’t leave well enough alone, making the character have a shady past when she grew up in Baltimore (turns out it was only shady because “the system” made it so, maybe making that subplot into a wee bit of a pithy social statement). Too much attention is paid to these two, and then they become irrelevant (they don’t even show up for the climax). Simmons is an old agent who’s guilty of always looking for the “big case,” messes up with another accountant turned informer, and generally uses Medina’s past as leverage to control her. Maybe the two characters should be combined.

Another superfluous character is Dana Cummings, played by Anna Kendrick. Some accountant in the evil corporation where Christian is called in to consult had to discover the six million discrepancy, but that person didn’t even need to be named. She is, though, and Kendrick’s talent is probably wasted on the character. Hollywood seems to think that every protagonist has to have a love interest, which might be a stretch for an autistic, especially because Christian seems to have more of a connection with a deeply troubled autistic girl met early on when he was a boy and the parents were trying to decide whether to institutionalize him. The boys who played young Christian and Brax, Seth Lee and Jake Presley, are excellent too, especially Seth.

The movie is about twenty minutes too long, and those minutes are used to rush through a denouement. That’s too bad. There are several twists after the climax and one in the climax, and they all seemed rushed. Without them, though, the viewer would be left asking, “Huh?”  Not all the surprises make sense. (I wouldn’t have chosen the Jackson Pollack, for example!)  There’s some promise of things to come, too, which is fine, but I hope that this movie doesn’t have a sequel. It’s an entertaining package by itself, so I hope Hollywood leaves well enough alone. That probably depends on how much money the film makes, unfortunately, but the best films often outdo their sequels if they have one. The Accountant is like 8mm and Blade Runner—no sequels needed!

This is one of those movies where you have to pay attention. It’ detailed and dark with many flashbacks that you have to integrate into a complete timeline. The moviegoer has to work a bit, so I imagine those who are accustomed to action films that are more like computer games won’t like it. I found that it had more action than a John Le Carré tale but still explored that gray area where good and evil aren’t binary descriptions of real life. Is it a faithful representation of autism and how relatives handle it? That’s for the experts to decide, like I said, but it all seemed plausible to me. This movie might be considered a sleeper, but I can guarantee that it’s a far better movie than Jack Reacher, its stereotypical and boring competitor.

***

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