The Accountant

I have been anticipating doing today’s entry for awhile, but held off to put some distance behind my initial theatrical viewing two and a half years ago to see if 2016’s The Accountant (trailer) was still worthy of being ranked as my 2016 film of the year. After re-watching it yesterday I can safely assure it absolutely does.

Another reason I was a little reluctant going back to it was being trepid of having rose-colored glasses for the time and place I originally saw The Accountant. I was on my last day of work before starting a vacation in fall of 2016 and on break I was skimming through the local paper’s entertainment section and it had a little write-up of The Accountant and its risks taken of doing a movie centered around a person with autism and making them a professional assassin. I somehow missed previews for it and it was the first I heard of the film. A couple friends who knew I was heading out of town the next day gave me a buzz after work to see if I wanted to join them to see The Accountant, and I was intrigued by the brief summary in the paper I read and have been a huge fan of Affleck for the better part of his career to jump on the opportunity. It turned out being a great decision and a perfect way to kickoff a vacation.

The film grabbed me right away with the opening scene where one Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is at his front, ‘ZZZ Accounting,’ doing the taxes for a down-on-their-luck farming couple. The way it plays out almost instantly made Christian affable for pulling the farmers out of a tough hole. The opening scenes proceed to introduce how Christian copes with his day-to-day lifestyle while we are introduced to a pair of FBI agents Ray King (JK Simmons) and Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) who is tasked with tracking down Wolff throughout the film.

There are so many great little exchanges early in the film, especially when Wolff is getting acquainted with the rest of the cast. He is introduced to Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow) who hires him to track down missing money recently reported to his company. Wolff’s scenes with the adorably aloof Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick) steal the film every time they share the screen. Cummings is Wolff’s assistant in tracking down the missing money, and naturally their digging gets too deep and assassins are sent after them with the primary one going by Brax (a pre-Punisher Jon Bernthal). Little did the assassins know who they were targeting as their attempts at laying waste to the accountants is the catalyst that yields several thrilling action/chase sequences as a result.

Interspersed throughout the film is a series of flashbacks with Christian and his family coping with Christian’s condition and how his father put him through some grueling home therapy and training that lead him to become the ‘accountant’ he is in the film’s present day. It was fascinating watching these flashbacks play out and piecing The Accountant’s greater over-arching plot together along with the FBI in some excellent deducing scenes as everything falls into place. Most films have twists that we can predict or see coming from a mile away, but I loved how they played out in multiple ways in the closing moments to wrap a tidy bow on this. I do not want to overhype this as the quintessential brain-buster, but for me The Accountant provided the perfect balance of detective work, exposition, high-tempo chases and action that combined for the killer formula and make it my favorite film of 2016.

There are only three quick bonus features on the BluRay totaling up to 25 minutes, but worth going out of your way to see. Both Inside the Man and Behavioral Sciencedeal with the cast and crew’s research that went into the film and how they strived to give a faithful portrayal of Autism. They both provided great insight on their experiences and sessions on doing their background for the film. Accountant in Action is all about the stunts and choreography for the movie. What is here is good, but the extra features felt they were missing one or two things to make the bonuses collectively pop like a commentary track with Affleck, Kendrick, Simmons and director Gavin O’Connor, but it was not meant to be!

On a final note I want to make sure to applaud the casting for this film as O’Connor got excellent performances out of everyone. When doing research for this film I became giddy to see a sequel was announced with most of the headlining cast returning and O’Connor coming back to direct, but that was two years ago and when checking IMDB the sequel is still listed as merely ‘announced.’ Here is hoping the sequel comes to fruition, and if you cannot tell by now The Accountant gets my highest of recommendations to check out if you have not done so already.

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

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12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed
Deck the Halls
Die Hard
Dredd
The Eliminators
The Equalizer
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Indiana Jones 1-4
Ink
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jobs
Joy Ride 1-3
Man of Steel
Man on the Moon
Marine 3-6
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Mortal Kombat
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Replacements
Reservoir Dogs
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Skyscraper
Small Town Santa
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
Vision Quest
The War
Wild
Wonder Woman
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past