The Accountant (2016) Movie Review

The Accountant (2016) Movie Review

Joseph Bozzella, Staff Writer

The Accountant action-thriller directed by Gavin O’Connor (Warrior) and stars Ben Affleck (Good Will Hunting, Argo), Anna Kendrick (Pitch Perfect), J.K. Simmons (Spider-Man, Whiplash), and Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead, Fury). Affleck plays a character who is a highly-performing autistic person and is an accountant by day for the lower class but secretly does accounting for numerous criminal organizations around the world and will is also an assassin if his moral code is broken. Affleck and Bernthal are tremendous in this movie as they convincingly perform their acting scenes but also deliver on their emotional scenes. Affleck does a great job in giving his character some depth, which in the hands of a lesser actor, the character would have come across as shallow and unrelatable. The action scenes are extremely brutal but are extremely exciting to watch and are reminiscent of 2014’s John Wick. However, the movie falters in its plot construction and poorly written characters and storylines. This film is extremely difficult to follow and does not have clear motivations laid out for some of the major characters. Additionally, Kendrick and Simmons’ storylines are not needed in this film and Simmon’s storyline is basically there so he can give exposition for who Affleck’s character is. What saves the story aspect of this film is there are some very surprising and exciting twists at the end of the movie with only one of them being kind of obvious before the movie reveals it. Overall, The Accountant is a fun movie that reaches the highs of John Wick but its lows feel much lower.

 

The Accountant: 7.5 out of 10