The Accountant

Bluesky

The Accountant's condition isn't initially named, there's a moment where we come close and are told that a psychiatric professional in 1989 "doesn't believe in labels". It's not quite as neat a dodge as when The Silence Of The Lambs says they don't have a name for what Hannibal is, but it allows the film a bit of wiggle room. Not quite as much as the difference between a vampire and a Dracula but enough to park the word 'savant' nearby. They do later use 'autism', but diagnostic criteria are sprayed as wildly as bullets and with equivalent accuracy.

Ben Affleck had already played a few characters with preternatural if not supernatural skills, though his ability to see patterns here is attributed to his 'condition' and not a reward for unspecified work or echoes of a science accident. He'd play Batman for the first time the same year this came out. This does as much as most superhero stories to supply an origin story. The fact that it takes place in the intersection of criminal enterprise and corporate skulduggery means it's more akin to another Batman's turn in Michael Clayton.

The variously named Christian Wolff is differently charismatic than Clooney's lawyer, Affleck just about manages to suppress his charm to make The Accountant standoffish and weird. That's in part because at times he seems to be trying to play both leads in Rain Man at once. I could make a joke about double-entry book-keeping but on balance it doesn't seem worth it.

The Accountant has several tracks. Its influence is more than just a sequel, its success suggested that there was still room for invention in the "capable man wreaks revenge" genre. A chance often squandered. For every John Wick there's A Working Man who suggests that Nobody does it better. It's not a new genre. Falling Down was playing with the form 30-odd years ago, and schlock like The Evil That Men Do was reheating the leftovers a decade before that.

Entertainingly it's John Wick that's the shorthand for the genre just now, though the Affleck's pal Matt Damon's as Jason Bourne was distinct enough that nobody else really managed to pick up that Legacy.

It's not the first time Anna Kendrick's played a character who's become involved with a capable killer, though in Mr Right it was a clown and not a chartered accountant. In a relatively large cast, folk like JK Simmons, Jeffrey Tambor, John Lithgow, Jean Smart and John Bernthal suggest that it's always a bad idea to label things with a single initial and overlap in categories like "played or voiced a comic book character" "in a version of New York." Three Marvel, two (technically) DC if you're counting, but one of them is counted twice so one of them isn't in that set. No prize for it, but if you can't leave a puzzle untried then The Accountant might cause you problems.

Given characters' awareness of techniques in forensic accounting, some of the chicanery and shenanigans seems amateurish in hindsight, but the problem any story faces with depicting characters of unusual intellectual capability is keeping their insight in sight. The Accountant might cover an entire boardroom in marker pen but that doubly shows its working. With a few years distance it feels more old-fashioned than it actually is.

Director Gavin O'Connor definitely has a fondness for film elements that have dated well, Affleck among them. Finding The Way Back has plenty of them too. O'Connor's earlier work, including a Western has a much wider range than his last few pictures, but some of that can probably be attributed to Hollywood's aversion to novelty. Writer Bill Dubuque would parlay a fondness for money-laundering for mafiosos and the mayhem in their wake into TV series Ozark, one that bears more than a nominative similarity to the filmed Fargo and its TV re-imagining.

The Accountant is entertaining enough, though sequences of loud music and flashing lights are almost recursively a form of exposure therapy. The action sequences are alright, but The Accountant falls into the common superheroic trap (or trope) of confusing origin stories with character development. There is some, even a happy ending of sorts, and I was pleased to see in advance of its sequel that it does hold up to a rewatch. In a genre as derivative, one would hope that a film wouldn't be entirely reliant on novelty, and it does chart a steady enough course. I'd put it in that category of films that are probably worth a try if you can get them for free. Time is money, but if you can't get either back you'd want to minimise your exposure. As it's a bit over two hours it could probably have done with some cutting, and if the combination of double-entry accounting and double-tap shooting doesn't appeal then missing it will be no loss.

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