I remember seeing the first trailer for The Accountant a few months back and thinking, “That’s a hilarious premise that looks like it could be terrible, but I bet it’s going to be awesome.” It seemed like the kind of bizarre premise — an accountant with high-functioning autism has to do something involving oversized guns — that you want more of when talking about how stale Hollywood is becoming. Here is a premise that is genuinely different, albeit one with a very high risk of going off the rails.
And I’ll be up front: It kinda does, but not necessarily in the way you might expect. The Accountant is a genuinely bizarre movie, both narratively and (perhaps more significantly) structurally. This film may be Ben Affleck’s John Wick (which was, itself, Keanu Reeves’ Taken), but it is very much unlike either of those films. It’s not exposition followed by nonstop mayhem; it’s much slower, much more dialogue-driven. Probably too dialogue-driven… but if you go in knowing that, I think you’re going to enjoy the heck out of it.
I know I did.
The Accountant
Director: Gavin O’Connor
Release Date: October 14th, 2016
Rating: R
The Accountant feels like a television pilot, an origin story with a little bit of Case of the Week madness thrown in. Ben Affleck plays the eponymous accountant, constantly creating new identities based on famous people who were interested in math (at the start of this story: Christian Wolff) and then discarding them whenever his situation becomes compromised. And why would it do that? Because he works for some of the most dangerous people in the world: terrorists, thieves, cartels, you know name it and he does their books. Key to his success is his autism, which causes a number of problems but also unlocks an incredible ability to solve puzzles and make connections. He can do the work of a half-dozen neurotypicals in half the time. And he always finishes what he starts.
I can only think of one other action movie with an autistic star, which would be Thai film Chocolate, by Prachya Pinkaew. In that film, an autistic girl watches martial arts movies and becomes a master. I bring it up solely because I think you should see it, because The Accountant isn’t really like it at all, though Mr. Wolff is a more-than-capable fighter. He was trained by his father, a military man, and the men that his father hired to make sure he could take care of himself. The flashbacks to his younger self, often at his worst, in the midst of meltdowns or other crises, demonstrate the difficulty of having a child with autism while also showing a fascinating sort of respect for what it can do. I’ll admit that my experience with autism is fairly limited, but what I saw felt pretty right. On the whole, the film is trying to make a pretty clear point: Autism is not a disorder or an illness; it’s just a different way of being. It’s not worse or better, just its own thing.
And credit where credit is due: That’s awesome. How many times have we seen an autistic protagonist who can genuinely take care of themselves in a major motion picture? Have we ever seen that? I’m honestly curious, so someone please tell me if that’s a thing. Certainly it wouldn’t be something like The Accountant. No, The Accountant is different.
I mentioned in the intro that this is a film with a genuinely strange structure, and what I mean by that is that the story itself comes out in bursts that feel sort of haphazardly placed. After big action sequences we’ll end up with long stretches of exposition that totally kill whatever intense pacing the film may have been building up. There is a lengthy subplot involving a pair from the Treasury trying to track him down, and as that story develops, we learn a lot about J.K. Simmons’ character. None of that really felt necessary, and it kind of bogs down the movie in its second half, but it also felt a little bit like, “Why not?” The characters in general feel like they’re being introduced for something grander, and we’ll learn more about them in future episodes. J.K. Simmons is set to retire, so this is probably the last we’ll be seeing of him. It was his time in the spotlight. Next week, we’ll learn more about someone else.
And while we’re getting a lot of character exposition about Affleck and Simmons, we’re getting pretty much nothing about the actual story itself. So, blah blah blah someone is cooking books. Affleck finds out about it. People need to die. Etc. We learn about the motivations of the bad guy, but his actual place in the film is so minor (and ultimately inconsequential) that the film may as well have no story at all. You might think that one of Wolff’s obviously dangerous clients is after him, but that isn’t it at all. As far as the film is concerned, he has successfully stayed off the grid. No one knows where to find him, so he only has to worry about the people right in front of him.
Which means that we’re probably in for a franchise, assuming The Accountant does well at the box office. It doesn’t end on a cliffhanger or anything, and it doesn’t need a sequel, but the character and his work is structured in such a way that it would be exceedingly easy to make one. You’d think that Affleck’s got his hands full with the whole Batman thing, but I imagine the dramatic work involved in The Accountant is a bit more satisfying. It’s possible that the action is too, because the movie actually has some pretty great fight scenes, ones that don’t need a whole bunch of purdy CGI to be cool. (Think Batman v. Superman’s warehouse fight, which is easily the best part of that movie (except it’s okay when Batman kills people in this one).)
And so I hope this does become a franchise, and I hope we get to see more of Anna Kendrick in fights, because in the one fight where she has a minor role, she’s a total badass about it. I heard a guy complaining after the film that she didn’t seem Damsel-in-Distress-y enough. And thank gosh; she’s way more interesting that. And I have to give the film credit for that, too. It treats pretty much all of its characters with a certain amount of dignity; they are (well, most of them) more complex than I had expected, and that made some of those slow, exposition-heavy moments a lot more bearable than they could have been.
There are many things about The Accountant that I genuinely loved and nothing that I really disliked. Sure, some of its issues, particularly around structure and pacing, are irritating. They keep The Accountant from being truly brilliant. But they don’t keep it from greatness.
Bring on The Accountant Chapter 2.
