I missed that: Review of "The Accountant"
When The Accountant hit the cinemas I heard mixed things. People I trust said is was ok and quite fun, but I never got around to watch it until now.
“Christian Wolff is a math savant with more affinity for numbers than people. Behind the cover of a small-town CPA office, he works as a freelance accountant for some of the world’s most dangerous criminal organizations. With the Treasury Department’s Crime Enforcement Division, run by Ray King, starting to close in, Christian takes on a legitimate client: a state-of-the-art robotics company where an accounting clerk has discovered a discrepancy involving millions of dollars. But as Christian uncooks the books and gets closer to the truth, it is the body count that starts to rise.”
- imdb
The Accountant is one of these movies that are... well... ok.
On the good side the action is fun and as that is the core of the movie, it did the most important thing right. Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal do a fine Job in those scenes and that big bearded guy from John Wyck and the Equalizer has a small role again (I kinda like that dude). J.K. Simmons is good as always.
I'm struggling to find more things to put on the "good" side, especially since I think the movie is overall ok, but there isn't really much. Apart from the action, most things were kind of "meh".
The movie tells us in flashbacks about the childhood of Christian, who's ex-military father tried to make him tough by trying to beat the autism out of him or something like that. So Christian and his brother undergo fight training with special-unit soldiers as trainer, they have to beat up other kids that bullied them and so on. It in a way felt like I'm watching a superhero origin movie in parts. Seth Lee, who plays young Christian, tries his best to portrait a kid with autism and does a ok job at that. Better that Affleck in most scenes anyway. Yes we are to believe that Christian at some time learned to have a normal live with his autism, and it's just "mild" autism to start with, but apart from a conversation at the end, I never buy Afflecks autism in the slightest( at least not what I expected autism to look like).
The story is probably the weakest part. It is overall boring and very predictable. Dana Cunnings (Anna Kendrick) is only there to make Christian feel a thing and break his routine and then she vanishes halfway through the movie, Ray King (J.K. Simmons) part of the story, the old cop who tries to find the infamous "Accountant" just doesn't make any sense to me, and the bad guy, who did the bad thing, that Christian wants to uncover, it way to foreseeable.
But at least we get an action packed finale, that makes up for the nonsense in between the action.
So if you like action ala The Transporter, Hitman or the later Fast and Furious movies, you might enjoy this as well.
My rating: 6,5/10
Oh yeah, the sniper rifle has a great sound... almost forgot to mention that.
