Review: In ‘The Accountant,’ Ben Affleck Plays a Savant With a Dark Secret
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Version 0 of 1. It all boils down to daddy issues. In its grueling scenes of martial-arts training, “The Accountant” suggests how cruelty in the name of teaching self-defense can destroy a child. The victim, Christian Wolff (played by Seth Lee as a boy and Ben Affleck as an adult), is mercilessly disciplined by his father, a sadistic, controlling military psychologist. It turns Christian, who is autistic, into a grim automaton mumbling gibberish and prone to tantrums. When dissatisfied with himself, he beats his legs with a wooden stick and practices other forms of self-torture. Eventually he runs wild like a cyborg on a shooting spree. Who knows why Mr. Affleck, looking appropriately dead-eyed and miserable, committed himself to this laborious ultraviolent brain tease of a crime thriller. The movie, directed by Gavin O’Connor (“Tumbleweeds”), makes little sense. The screenplay, by Bill Dubuque, is so determined to hide its cards that when the big reveal finally arrives, it feels as underwhelming as it is preposterous. And Mr. Affleck, despite a meticulous performance, never uncovers a glimpse of his abused character’s humanity beyond Christian’s carefully delineated symptoms. Early in the film, the young Christian’s parents learn he is on the autism spectrum. In scenes where doctors are consulted and tests conducted, “The Accountant” feels like a solemn, pretentious tutorial on the subject. His parents break up after disagreeing about his treatment, and daddy (Robert C. Treveiler) takes over and trains Christian so he can fight back against bullies. The story takes a giant leap forward, and the grown-up Christian is an accountant working out of a nondescript office in an Illinois strip mall. But what are an original Renoir and Jackson Pollock doing in his possession? The art turns out to be payment for his work as a forensic accountant and money launderer hired by drug cartels and mobsters. Once this is revealed, you may anticipate scenes of Christian consorting with international outlaws and leading a glamorous double life. But no — there aren’t any first-class jaunts to exotic foreign capitals, and no scenes of him being wined, dined and entertained by strippers amid piles of cocaine. He is a tormented loner. His condition is the central fact of his existence and the source of his genius as a math savant whose proficiency with numbers makes him so valuable. The movie spends considerable time demonstrating Christian’s prodigious abilities. He is a walking calculator. He at least has enough self-awareness to be able to describe his condition, and to recognize that his chances of a romantic relationship are “two billion to one.” Aware that the criminal investigations division of the Treasury Department is on his trail, he takes a major legitimate client: Living Robotics, which specializes in constructing prosthetic limbs. Just as the company is about to go public, Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick), a junior accountant at that firm, discovers a $61 million discrepancy in the books, and she and Christian work to trace the missing funds. Ms. Kendrick’s appearance invites the possibility of a romantic connection with Christian, but the movie, remaining true to its austere, ultramacho, deeply misanthropic ethos doesn’t allow it. In one of three poorly integrated subplots, Ray King (J. K. Simmons), the ruthless director of Treasury’s criminal investigations division, pressures Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), a Treasury agent with a shady past, into identifying the renegade accountant. But the movie forgets about them until it’s time to tie up loose ends. A pall of sleaze hangs over every character except Ms. Kendrick’s. John Lithgow exudes an air of conspiratorial nastiness as Living Robotics’ founder, and Jeffrey Tambor has a tone of regretful defeat as Christian’s imprisoned mentor. When a mysterious bad guy, Braxton (Jon Bernthal), pops into the movie, you don’t know what to make of him until the very end, and even then he has no place. The timeline of “The Accountant” is so arbitrary that the subplots seem shuffled like pieces of an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. Entire back stories were presumably left on the cutting-room floor of this overlong movie that never arrives at a destination. “The Accountant” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for strong violence and language. Running time: 2 hours 8 minutes. |