By Preston Wilder
I’m not sure what to do with The Accountant, a solemn two-hour-plus film – not quite a thriller, too close to genre to be classed as a drama – that tries for emotional impact yet doesn’t seem to have any real point. It’s the kind of film that ends with a long, slow fade to black, as if pulling away from some human tragedy too grand to be fully encompassed – and the mournful gravitas doesn’t seem unearned, just a little misplaced. It’s the kind of film where, if you watch it with friends, one of your friends might say ‘That was pretty bad’ as you’re filing out, and you find yourself replying: ‘I know. But it had … something’.
One thing’s for sure: it’s a good week at the cinema for middle-aged stars playing to their limitations. Mel Gibson takes his toxic Mel Gibson-ness and turns it into a strength in Blood Father – and Ben Affleck does something similar, albeit not in the same way. Real-life angry Mel informs the cinematic Mel, whereas real-life Ben is apparently a sharp, lively guy (he’s a fine director, notably with Argo) – the opposite of cinematic Ben, who turns into a block of wood once the camera starts rolling. To be fair, Affleck the actor has his fans – yet it’s only in The Accountant that he really exploits that blankness, playing an autistic savant with submerged emotions and no real interest in people.
Actually, Christian Wolff is more than just autistic: he’s a Denzel Washington role, not just good with numbers but a sharp-shooter and lethal weapon who can kill a man with a single kick to the head. His reticence isn’t far removed from Denzel’s strong-and-silent existential heroes in films like The Equalizer – and of course he’s a man of action rather than words, simply because he’s not good with words. Being autistic, he doesn’t do chit-chat. “I made it myself. Do you like it?” asks a cheerful farmer’s wife, showing off some trinket; “Not particularly,” replies Wolff with crushing honesty. Business exchanges tend to be short and to-the-point. “Who did it? Best guess.” “I don’t guess.”
The farmer’s wife is also a business client, Christian being a creative accountant with an eye for loopholes – but the plot has him auditing a robotics company where embezzlement is suspected, and meanwhile three other sub-plots are also unfolding. One features flashbacks from Christian’s childhood, showing how his military dad forced him to ‘toughen up’ in order to survive in the world; the other has FBI honcho Ray King (J.K. Simmons) coming after our hero, having identified him as an associate of various shady clients; and the third follows a whole other character (played by Jon Bernthal), a hired assassin with a moral code and a nice line in sadistic banter.
The point is for all these strands to coalesce, resulting (hopefully) in a hefty dramatic punch. That doesn’t happen, mostly because the film doesn’t really establish what it wants to establish; it’s diffuse, and the stakes seem too low. The final act spends ages answering questions – e.g. why Wolff’s thermos is dented – that no-one was asking in the first place, and the plot is finally too simple for all the elaborate set-up. We also get scenes like Anna Kendrick telling a lengthy story about a prom dress (the kind of extended riff actors love to deliver) that doesn’t seem to have enough point to justify its length, beyond a vague “We’re all trying to connect”.
The only aspect that really comes through is Wolff’s autism, expressed in scenes like his rigid evening routine – he blows on his hands before eating dinner, and makes sure the foods don’t touch on his plate; he always takes his meds at the same time, and massages his knotted muscles for relaxation – but also expressed in Affleck’s robotic aloofness and the deft compositions, which often place him in the exact centre of the frame. The visuals are superb in general, with some striking images: a shot inside a prison at night, with a single crescent of light around the wardens’ desk, is quite beautiful.
Maybe that’s The Accountant’s trump card, the closed-off quality it carries both visually and dramatically, this pervasive heaviness which gives it atmosphere. It’s a film with a hero who’s unable to connect and a plot that has too much going on – and it’s no surprise that the result is unsatisfying, yet that same not-quite-there vibe is what makes it interesting. The climax seems to promise a cathartic showdown that’ll quell Christian’s personal demons – but in fact what happens is more unresolved, and a lot more personal. This is not a very good film, yet it has … something.
THE ACCOUNTANT
DIRECTED BY Gavin O’Connor
STARRING Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, Jon Bernthal
US 2016 128 mins
