Review Tuesday: The Accountant (2016)

 

  

The Accountant

2016 

A forensic accountant discovered a money trail in a big tech company, causing ripples with the wrong people. 

For years I heard all sorts of good things about the movie THE ACCOUNTANT. An action movie about an accountant? And it stars Ben Affleck? How absurd! However, on a recent vacation it was an inflight movie, so I gave it a go. 

 

Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is a detail oriented forensic accountant for some very dangerous characters. In an effort to get away from such dangerous work, he took a forensic accounting job for a tech giant. Within a day he found a trend that money was being siphoned off at which point the company terminated his work contract. Then employees started getting murdered. 

 

The trouble for these killers is that Wolff also happens to be a violent killer trained by the military. So while he's doing his thing, treasury agents happen to be hunting him down. Agent Ray Kind (JK Simmons) and Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson).

 

The plotline with the corporate hits made sense. They were up to no good and they didn't want it exposed.  Affleck playing a socially inept yet brilliant accountant works because he is a very wooden actor and doesn't know how to act naturally. The plotline about the agents tracking down THE ACCOUNTANT because... why? They knew the accountant was supplying them with good information to make arrests. The accountant spared King's life during a previous killing spree. Why were they after him? Sure he dealt with some bad dudes, but he was a bean counter. I guess they wanted to add an edge to this. Not bad. I found it entertaining.