#365DaysOfWriting — Day 160
The Accountant
You may be forgiven for thinking that’s Bruce Wayne giving an accounting lesson.
Except that’s not Bruce Wayne. That’s Christian Wolff, and he’s trying to get to the bottom of an alleged accounting fraud. He’s not your typical accountant though — he’s a an autistic mathematics savant, an absolute genius who likes numbers more than people. Using his small-time CPA accounting firm as cover, he makes his living cooking the books for dangerous international criminal organisations.
As a story/plot, this could’ve worked brilliantly for a Batman film.
There are quite a lot of meta Batman references scattered throughout The Accountant. For starters, you have the DCEU’s Jim Gordon, JK Simmons, who plays treasury agent Ray King. Then there’s the potential Robin, Anna Kendrick, as the willing ‘sidekick’ to Affleck’s Chris Wolff. Mr. Wolff also has had a troubled, traumatic past — as an autistic boy trying to fit in a cruel world. His upbringing involves a lot of ‘training’ in hand-to-hand combat. You get the gist. What’s more, there are interactions between the actors that will seem like they’re actually in a DC movie — you’ll need to watch it to know what I’m talking about.
But hold on… here comes a Marvelous twist. No pun intended.
We have The Punisher, Jon Bernthal, as Braxton — another killer-for-hire facing off against Chris Wolff. But he brings a more personal touch to his killings — he forces people to kill themselves by persuasion. Only if the talks go south, does he resort to absolute violence. And Bernthal does a mighty good job of it.
This film has a few twists and turns.
It’s a good old-fashioned thriller that unwraps all its mysteries as you keep watching. It gets predictable now and then, but the performances from the cast keep you highly entertained. There are also a few good laughs along the way.
