The Accountant, featuring Ben Affleck in one of his most interesting performances (whether that should translate as "best" is hard to say, he still has a lot of years left in him as a performer), is an autistic man who got trained as a boy by his father (along with his brother) to overcome his "disability", as the old man saw it (ex-military, duh), to become a take-no-prisoners-I-will-kill-you badass killer. Except that the autism doesn't go away just because of the extra killer-training, so he spends his time when he's not "cooking" the books for drug cartels and mobsters and even some terrorists (maybe) working as a mild-mannered CPA (emphasis on mild, sometimes people in front of him can't hear him he talks so softly). All should be well and good, but while he is having to deal with an account that goes bad - a little in the vein of John Wick, I suppose, someone who doesn't give two f***s thinks they can mess with/kill this 'Christian Wolff' (not his real name) - he also has to deal with conventional screen writing.
Okay, that last part is me trying to be too clever in this review, but this is a movie where clearly the hook (or the logline) is amazing: what if someone like a Jason Bourne or a Wick or somebody, a man who comes on the scene, shoots people in the head, and has not an exactly friendly/James Bondian personality, and was fully on the "spectrum"; from childhood this character got traumatized by his militaristic father (and where was the brother? Um, sort of spoiler, but here's a hint: as an adutl his name is on the poster). This, along with the script getting on the Blacklist, sold the concept to Hollywood, though I think the script still needed some work. It's a film that is juggling a lot of balls and may be too long because of it; while JK Simmons is a national treasure among character actors, his role in this film, though with some gravitas and (occasionally) some surprising emotion, is there mostly as a 2nd-turning point exposition dump, with information that would've been helpful to another character (also given a kind of 'you must do this or else' mission that makes little sense, in the circumstances I mean, it never comes back to it).
In other words, this sub-plot, which seems to be necessary for some reason, is there mostly to provide us with a man-hunt element for Christian Wolff that isn't necessary. There's enough story there with Wolff and the plastic-cyborg boss (John Lithgow), and Anna Kendrick as the fellow accountant who is probably the closest to an audience surrogate (Affleck is our 'hero', but is such a blank canvas at some points and other times such a wounded creature that it's hard to put ourselves in his position, aside from empathizing with overcoming pain of course if one's had it). It's as if there's a more compelling drama about the breakdown of a family and the trauma that's brought on by it, mostly seen in flashback, and then the main storyline with Affleck trying to protect Kendrick, while engaging, is not something we necessarily haven't seen before.
The only truly original element when it comes down to it is the autism, and to the filmmakers' credit it is handled with both sensitivity and even a playful sense of humor. Affleck and the writer do understand that there can be, in the right context, some awkward humor to mine from a character that not so much can't relate to people like the one Kendrick plays but is not using the words one usually does in the social contract. And Affleck is doing so little here, but that makes for a striking change of pace - he isn't having to do the overly AFFLECK acting that sometimes tripped him up when he was younger (sometimes it worked well, like Hollywoodland, other times not). Here he wipes his emotional radar clean and the audience can put themselves on to him, up to a point, and then when there is the hesitation, those little cracks, it resonates.
It's like the movie has the ingredients for a strong director, with O'Connor getting how to make a hit-man (or hit men with Bernthal) move quickly with action that is intense and intelligible, yet also pace it so we can spend time with the characters, and the cast is pretty much on point (also Addai-Robinson, *TV's* Amanda Waller, is good as well, for what she can do), and the script is hit or miss. There are a lot of excellent scenes here, little moments that stick out (notice Dana's reactions to Christian's paintings), but there's a lot of silliness and things that we have to buy that don't quite gell; it even leans into the superhero territory of a comic-book movie as far as just how precise Christian can get. And near the end, there's one twist too many - one of them I could actually buy, sort of, and then there's one final one that is flat-out unconscionable.
So it's good. But it's also unfocused and a little too proud of itself, nearly self-importance. It pulls back enough to be entertaining, but its mixed up as far as giving us too much backstory way too late, like it either needed to be a half hour longer or 20 minutes shorter, if that makes sense.
Okay, that last part is me trying to be too clever in this review, but this is a movie where clearly the hook (or the logline) is amazing: what if someone like a Jason Bourne or a Wick or somebody, a man who comes on the scene, shoots people in the head, and has not an exactly friendly/James Bondian personality, and was fully on the "spectrum"; from childhood this character got traumatized by his militaristic father (and where was the brother? Um, sort of spoiler, but here's a hint: as an adutl his name is on the poster). This, along with the script getting on the Blacklist, sold the concept to Hollywood, though I think the script still needed some work. It's a film that is juggling a lot of balls and may be too long because of it; while JK Simmons is a national treasure among character actors, his role in this film, though with some gravitas and (occasionally) some surprising emotion, is there mostly as a 2nd-turning point exposition dump, with information that would've been helpful to another character (also given a kind of 'you must do this or else' mission that makes little sense, in the circumstances I mean, it never comes back to it).
In other words, this sub-plot, which seems to be necessary for some reason, is there mostly to provide us with a man-hunt element for Christian Wolff that isn't necessary. There's enough story there with Wolff and the plastic-cyborg boss (John Lithgow), and Anna Kendrick as the fellow accountant who is probably the closest to an audience surrogate (Affleck is our 'hero', but is such a blank canvas at some points and other times such a wounded creature that it's hard to put ourselves in his position, aside from empathizing with overcoming pain of course if one's had it). It's as if there's a more compelling drama about the breakdown of a family and the trauma that's brought on by it, mostly seen in flashback, and then the main storyline with Affleck trying to protect Kendrick, while engaging, is not something we necessarily haven't seen before.
The only truly original element when it comes down to it is the autism, and to the filmmakers' credit it is handled with both sensitivity and even a playful sense of humor. Affleck and the writer do understand that there can be, in the right context, some awkward humor to mine from a character that not so much can't relate to people like the one Kendrick plays but is not using the words one usually does in the social contract. And Affleck is doing so little here, but that makes for a striking change of pace - he isn't having to do the overly AFFLECK acting that sometimes tripped him up when he was younger (sometimes it worked well, like Hollywoodland, other times not). Here he wipes his emotional radar clean and the audience can put themselves on to him, up to a point, and then when there is the hesitation, those little cracks, it resonates.
It's like the movie has the ingredients for a strong director, with O'Connor getting how to make a hit-man (or hit men with Bernthal) move quickly with action that is intense and intelligible, yet also pace it so we can spend time with the characters, and the cast is pretty much on point (also Addai-Robinson, *TV's* Amanda Waller, is good as well, for what she can do), and the script is hit or miss. There are a lot of excellent scenes here, little moments that stick out (notice Dana's reactions to Christian's paintings), but there's a lot of silliness and things that we have to buy that don't quite gell; it even leans into the superhero territory of a comic-book movie as far as just how precise Christian can get. And near the end, there's one twist too many - one of them I could actually buy, sort of, and then there's one final one that is flat-out unconscionable.
So it's good. But it's also unfocused and a little too proud of itself, nearly self-importance. It pulls back enough to be entertaining, but its mixed up as far as giving us too much backstory way too late, like it either needed to be a half hour longer or 20 minutes shorter, if that makes sense.