The Accountant (15)
two stars
Dir: Gavin O’Connor
With: Ben Affleck, JK Simmons, Anna Kendrick
Runtime: 128 minutes
ONE has to admire the makers of this thriller for coming up with a title as tame as The Accountant and sticking with it. No disrespect to real accountants, that fine body of men and women with letters after their names and a winning way with numbers, but James Bond totes a Walther PPK, not a calculator; he drives an Aston Martin, not a desk.
Then again, the case of Gavin O’Connor’s picture, starring Ben Affleck as the digit cruncher, perhaps a title change would have been advisable. There is a distinct case of over-compensation going on here as Affleck and O’Connor take a promising idea and muck around with it till extreme silliness sets in. The result is a male mid-life crisis of a movie that doesn’t know if it wants to settle for comfy credibility or blow a year’s salary on a motorcycle.
Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is our accountant in question. No swish lair for this Mr Wolff – an office on a suburban strip mall is as good as it gets. But as we see him deal with the tax affairs of a blue-collar couple, finding an ingenious way for them to keep more of what is theirs out of the hands of Uncle Sam, it is clear there is more to this unassuming man than we might think.
And how. The screenplay by Bill Dubuque drips clues as to the real nature of Wolff, and the business he is in. Wolff is a facilitator, a super-accountant who finds ways for some very bad guys to wash their dirty money clean. Assassins, arms dealers, drug lords - his clientele are the top men on the world’s most wanted list. Such customers pay extremely well, naturally, but they are also not the most stable, reliable, bunch with which to do business, so Wolff has to stay one step ahead of the pack.
Aiding him immeasurably in this is his autism. Yes, we are back in the world where the movie industry “does” disability. In this world, disability is a drag, sure, but it can bring with it certain advantages and extraordinary abilities. Think Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman, and the Vegas trip. Things have become better in recent years, but there is still a tendency pick and choose. Here, for example, O’Connor (Jane Got a Gun, Warrior, Pride and Glory) provides flashbacks to Wolff’s traumatic childhood when his autism was not diagnosed or properly treated. So far, so credible. But we also see him as an adult living a glamorous other life that is managed by a mysterious Miss Moneypenny-type assistant while he divides his time between ritzy hotels and a special trailer packed with fabulous treasures. Naturally, he can read a balance sheet in seconds.
The film does not know what it wants him to be. Is he a Batman, leading a secret double life while fighting for good? Or is he a bad guy because of the company he keeps and what he does? Questions, questions, and now a US Treasury agent (JK Simmons) is leading a search for answers. Also curious about Wolff is Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick), an employee of a company that suspects someone is fiddling the books and asks Wolff to dig around. Kendrick is a welcome addition to any movie, even if she is not given very much to do here. The same goes for JK Simmons, an actor who knows exactly how far to stick tongue into cheek when it comes to this type of picture. Affleck, ripped muscles and all, convinces as a man not to be messed with.
You can see the potential here, how, with a little more restraint, the makers could have achieved a half-decent popcorn blockbuster for your Saturday night escapism. Certain scenes show O’Connor as the master of all he surveys through the camera when it comes to action scenes. But ultimately the Accountant wants to have it all – to be a thriller, a romance, an action movie, a twisty crime drama – only to end up unconvincing on all counts.
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