The Accountant 2016
My friend Royce, who sees way more movies than I do, had this one in his top ten for the year, so I wanted to see it and was glad to get to record it. I didn’t hear much else about it positive or negative, which is probably good because it didn’t get great reviews. It isn’t a bad movie, but has a hard time being really good. It is extremely hard to do corporate espionage well and I feel like way, way more people are killed in corporate espionage movies than ever get killed by actual corporate espionage (can’t think of any, though there have been suicides). There is a pretty high body count in this movie, much of it at the hands of Ben Affleck’s title character. The accountant has Asperger’s but is a math whiz, mostly employed by crime cartels, and his hobbies are shooting and fighting. Affleck isn’t that believable as a guy with autism, but he does okay, and it is fun to watch him doing what he does best. He stumbles into the corporate espionage plotline and meets Anna Kendrick, who is way, way smaller than he is. They have some cute scenes together and we also see some of the accountant’s upbringing, but conveniently skip all the bad things he has been doing for a living, other than vengeance he takes out on crime cartels that cross him. I feel like I’m giving away too much, but I haven’t even covered the main plot. Hollywood has done this movie a lot of times with different variations and it works, whether it is John Wick or Steven Seagal’s cook, an unassuming guy who takes on a ton of bad guys. Meanwhile, the FBI is trying to track him down under the lead of J. K. Simmons, who is always good. So there is a lot going on that makes it seem like the movie is pretty smart, but don’t look too closely or a lot of it falls apart. I enjoyed the ride despite the flaws, but those flaws are still there so maybe a B-.
Written: 12 Aug 2017