Gavin O’Connor directs Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal and J.K. Simmons in this thriller about a highly functioning autistic who takes to looking into some very bad peoples’ ledgers. 

About midway through The Accountant I figured out everything that would occur, and also exactly what it is. There is a flashback heavy scene of exposition that occurs between two subsidiary characters at the 90 minute point that had the length and heft and taste of an Issue 5 in a comic book series. An issue where traditionally we get a self contained subplot that also manages to fill in a lot of the blanks of the main character’s mysteries.  I’m not the first person to realise that The Accountant is a low fantasy superhero origin story… but more importantly it is, in every fibre of its very being, a comic book movie. I should love it then, right? But it is a comic book movie with a need for every image and idea and wrinkle introduced in the first half of the plot to find a fitting home in the second. Every column must add up to an end sum, every piece of the jigsaw (a fitting metaphor considering our protagonist is first introduced completing one) must slot together to form a neat square. Too neat to enjoy once you twig that is the goal, to show off, to Sixth Sense you. Coincidence becomes cliche. Formal issues… and they are difficult to overlook… aside we get strong performances from a starry cast and glossy, kinetic violence that satisfies, but too often in the second half, grip gave way to audible chuckle as an entire cinema screen realised another misshapen piece had popped in perfectly. I even feel those laughs are intentional… but I came for a thrill ride a la Bourne or John Wick, not a screenwriting Rubik’s cube. An efficient  actioner about an emotionally closed off individual has early moments where it truly connects, until you realise just how grindingly mechanical the manipulations are. An enjoyable enough shame.

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