The Accountant

The Accountant is the kind of movie that is surprisingly intelligent, but that critics call "stupid" (or various synonyms of "stupid" when they don't want to sound childish) because they're too lazy to follow the plot twists. Yes, The Accountant has quite a few plot twists, but it's not about the twists, if you understand my distinction.

Ben Affleck stars as the title character, a mild-mannered accountant named Christian Wolff. He is nothing short of brilliant at his job, and he uses this brilliance indiscriminately, whether he's helping a poor farmer avoid disclosure on his house, or whether he's working for one of the wealthiest men in the country, robotics mogul Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow), who hires Mr. Wolff to investigate his company's financial history, to find out if anyone has been embezzling from the company.

I'm not giving anything away here -- the ads and posters for this movie all reveal this -- when I explain that, in addition to being one of the best accountants in the business, Affleck's character, Christian Wolff, is also a highly skilled hitman. Expertise in these two radically different professions may seem to stretch credibility, but screenwriter Bill Dubuque pleasantly surprises by providing a back story that makes this bizarre juxtaposition sensible. I mean, it doesn't just make sense in a "it's a movie, suspend your disbelief" manner. It actually makes sense.

How? Well, that part I won't give away. The gradual unfolding of the plot is one of this film's joys, so I feel I can't say much more than the fact that the movie's about how Mr. Wolff has kept his two professions separate, and how his world is turned upside down when they inevitably collide.

It should be noted that Mr. Wolff is autistic. The film's treatment of his autism isn't at all in the bad taste that some knee-jerk reactions might lead you to believe. Mr. Wolff's autism is never treated as  a source of pity or humor. It's never used as an excuse for his moral fallibilities. It's neither incidental to his character (cheap "window dressing" as a short-cut to make him more interesting) nor does it define his character; it is, rather, an intricate aspect of his character, inseparable from but not the source of all other sides of his personality. I liked this.

There's actually a lot to like about The Accountant. I like how seemingly minor characters eventually find their pasts intertwined with the main storyline. I like how director Gavin O'Connor and screenwriter Bill Dubuque paint their picture with such careful precision that the explanation for one of the twists is made crystal clear not by dialogue, but by a single look on someone's face -- and at the precisely right moment.

This is not a perfect movie. The twists are a bit too many -- most of them add value to the story, but some could have been completely thrown out, without losing anything. And there is one twist that did really bother me, as it depends on a supporting character doing something he really had no motivation to do. But as I said, while this is a twisty movie, it's not about the twists. It's about Affleck's Mr. Wolff -- how he deals with the world, how he deals with the challenges that that world throws at him, challenges both routine and extraordinary. And on that level, among others, The Accountant succeeds a great deal. This is not a perfect movie. But it is a very good one.