At cinemas nationwide now

For all of the stated intentions about presenting autism in as positive a light as possible, The Accountant ends up as a muddled and disingenuous thriller that tries to have its cake and eat it.  On the one hand it indulges in standard Rain Man tropes involving high speed maths and lazy visual shorthand (dizzying sequences of numbers scribbled on windows), and on the other, is not above uses it as an excuse to indulge in a variation on the ’emotionless killer’ sub-genre.

That’s not to say that it isn’t a superficially entertaining thriller, albeit one with an unnecessary labyrinthine and ultimately ludicrous plot.  Ben Affleck is fairly convincing as Christian Wolff, a maths savant who becomes embroiled in a dangerous game of cat and mouse involving big business, hired mercenaries, and an FBI agent intent on tracking him down.  In standard Hollywood thriller fashion, some female foil is needed, and Anna Kendrick is drafted in to play the junior accountant who discovers an anomaly that kickstarts the whole mess.  The awkward, sweetly gawky and tentative interplay between the two is great, but again, in standard Hollywood thriller fashion, she’s ultimately sidelined.

It is tempting to give The Accountant a bit of a pass as it does at least attempt to get beneath the surface of its protagonist.  His almost superhuman prowess at gun play and martial arts (particularly Pencak Silat – director O’Connor and writer Bill Dubuque have obviously been watching The Raid) is down to his military father’s misguided attempts to toughen up his ‘different’ son in order to function in the real world.  Perhaps, with this backstory, the bank rollers are sniffing at a potential franchise.  This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.  If they could tighten up the story and make Wolff a little more consistent as a character there could well be some mileage as a John Wick type.  There are moments where it feels like it veers away from his autistic persona when the plot demands it.

It also must be said that this is a film that takes every opportunity to tell rather than show.  The worst offender is J.K. Simmons‘ FBI agent and his bizarrely Chandler-esque voiceover that brings proceedings grinding to a halt for ten minutes towards the end of the second act.  That much expositional dialogue is simply lazy writing, and Dubuque seems simply unsure how to get around Wolff’s undemonstrative, buttoned-up nature.

For an easy two hours The Accountant will do the job, but under any serious scrutiny it begins to fall apart.  The idea of the savant assassin is intriguing, but it needs more streamlined writing, and more adept visual storytelling.