The Accountant

Theatrical Release Poster

Ben Affleck stars as The Accountant in this crime thriller about an Autistic man who works as a freelance accountant for very dangerous people. When the movie begins, Christian's (Ben Affleck) parents learn that one of their two sons is Autistic. The parents break up, the mother leaves her two sons to be taken care of by their father and he trains them to fight.
In the present day, Christian works as an accountant in Illinois and also as a forensic accountant for drug cartels and mobsters. Christian is a loner and is extremely good with numbers which makes him very valuable. He finds out that the Treasury Department is after him so he takes the Living Robotics company as a client. A junior accountant at the company, Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick) discovers inconsistency in the books, so she works with Christian to track the missing funds. The CEO of Living Robotics Lamar Blackburn(John Lithgow) and his sister Rita Blackburn (Jean Smart) all cooperate with the investigation by Christian but the CFO, Ed Chilton says Dana is making a mistake.

Christian Wolf (Ben Affleck) and Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick)

  A treasury agent, Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) is pressured by the supervisor of the criminal division of the Treasury Department, Ray King (J.K. Simmons) to identify The Accountant.
A hit man known as "The Assassin" threatens to kill Chilton and his wife unless Chilton gives himself an insulin overdose. Lamar tells Christian that Chilton committed suicide out of guilt and he closes the investigation. This leaves Christian distressed as his investigation was not over.

Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) and Ray King (J.K. Simmons)

 Medina discovers all Christian's cover identities including his current name. She also finds out that he recites the nursery rhyme Solomon Grundy to himself which is a behavior associated with autism. She finds his office and his donations to Harbor Neuroscience Institute. A group of assassins try to kill Dana and Christian saves her. They both discover that Rita is behind the missing funds. Christian goes to her house but finds her dead which meant Lamar was the true culprit. Christian goes to Lamar's mansion and a shootout ensues with The Assassin. While Christian recites the rhyme Solomon Grundy, The Assassin recognizes the rhyme and tells Christian that they are brothers. After fighting each other, Christian kills Lamar while his brother Braxton watches. Christian says goodbye to Dana and goes to find Braxton. 

Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick) and Christian Wolf (Ben Affleck)

      The Accountant has a lot of plots which felt like they were all trying to fit in and make sense. The movie was too long and the time wasn't used as well as it should have leaving me bored 45 minutes into the movie. It was good seeing Anna Kendrick in a more serious role but it was really Ben Affleck who made this movie worth it. He isn't on my list of best fifty actors but it's refreshing seeing him in such a different role. In my opinion, he portrayed his character really well. J.K. Simmons also does a good job, even though I think a lot of his scenes were a little irrelevant. It was no where near his role in Whiplash which earned him an Oscar. The Accountant didn't really make a good point for me apart from the fact that an autistic kid was really good with numbers and guns. The only good scenes in this movie were the action scenes where Affleck shows an incredible amount of skill. I can't even fully summarize this movie because of the excessive number of plots which were just muddled up, some scenes were totally unnecessary.

Rating: 5/10


Director Gavin O'Connor
Writer Bill Dubuque
Starring Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K.Simmons, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Jeffery Tambor, John Lithgow
Running Time 2h 8m 

View the trailer below;