Respond to these rapid questions in our The Accountant quiz and we will tell you which The Accountant character you are. Play it now.
“Can you tell me how to make a financial intrigue thriller more exciting than the average?” I wondered. As “The Accountant” begins, you can almost hear screenwriter Bill Dubuque ask that question and then crack the back of his hands together with a crack of the knuckles. As part of the strange opening minutes, directed by Gavin O’Connor with his customary nose to the grindstone conviction, there is a strange scene of an urban mob massacre that is tinged in sepia and boasts a lot of faux-celluloid graininess in order to imply “period grit.” Finally, in another scene set in 1989, a kind doctor, who runs a home for neurologically impaired children, describes why their “different” son, who is struggling to adjust to life in the outside world, might have a better chance by spending the summer at the institute with other “different” kids. That child, under the supervision of his brother, completes a jigsaw puzzle not only in frighteningly short order, but also in a remarkably creative manner.
The film then jumps forward to the present day, where a strip mall accountant named Christian Wolff (the allusion is to the German philosopher and mathematician, not the contemporary avant-garde musician and composer, and you can only imagine how disappointed I am by this) is played by Ben Affleck (who, frankly, is trying a little too hard to be flat—the strain shows), dazzles a couple of his clients with tax code wizardry that anyone who’s ever filed under “self-employment And then we’re whisked away to the Department of the Treasury, where affable bigwig Ray (J.K. Simmons) provides some background information on a mystery man—who happens to be the man played by Affleck, as we’ve already established. It sounds like Simmons is setting the stage for an episode of “The Blacklist.” “He’s their accountant, an accountant, ‘the’ accountant,” Simmons explains. Cynthia Addai-Robinson portrays the junior officer to whom he is explaining all of this. She is intrigued. And she quickly becomes irritated when Simmons unearths some old memories from her past in order to effectively blackmail her into tracking down “the accountant” for him.
There’s a lot going on in this film, and for a long time, “The Accountant” ruminates on its plethora of plot threads, even as it continues to weave more into them. As it turns out, the “accountant” that the Treasury agents are on the lookout for is capable of much more than simply assisting rural residents with their tax obligations. He uncooks the books for a slew of lethal bad guys while they are on the run. Deadly bad guys who, as any attentive viewer will notice, are later apprehended by the Treasury Department are depicted. While working alongside some of the most dangerous criminals in the known universe, this man goes by dozens of different names and manages to stay alive. How? Several flashbacks show Wolff’s father (Robert C. Treveiler) giving Christian his more militaristic cure, which manifests itself later in the form of sharpshooting and martial arts abilities. I admit that taking a “Rain Man”-type character and turning him into a Lethal Killing Machine is a novel concept, but it’s also in poor taste, which the film attempts to alleviate by depicting autism with sympathy and some progressive accuracy throughout the film. However, in spite of the fact that the accountant has a large sum of money and valuable artwork at his disposal, his life is filled with suffering, much of it in the form of self-punishment. As a result, the viewer is left to speculate as to why he engages in such risky behavior.
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A nice British-accented woman, who appears to be the only person he can truly trust and with whom he only communicates by phone, tells him that it’s time for him to take on a “legitimate” big client and places him in the lap of a high-tech prosthetics firm headed by John Lithgow, who is playing himself. As it turns out, Dana, one of the accounting staff at the firm, played by Anna Kendrick (who, as she did in “Up in the Air,” does excellent work in a role that is neither romantic nor romantically interested), has discovered a discrepancy. As they say, Christian “uncooks” the dish… After that, a gang of nefarious assassins is dispatched to murder both Christian and Dana.
The Accountant Quiz
The action picks up speed here. In a scene that is by far and away my favorite in the film, Christian assassinates a man who appears to be a cross between Vice mascot and rapper Action Bronson. Jon Bernthal portrays a highly effective hitman/financial-malfeasance-avenging-angel who arrives on the scene. The plot, as they say, continues to thicken.
Also, you will find out which character are you in this The Accountant quiz.
After that, things start to go wrong. With two plot reveals that are among the most ridiculous I’ve witnessed in a long time, the film takes a dangerous turn for the worse. The worst of the two twists is made genuinely hilarious by the cutaways to Lithgow watching things unfold on his home security camera monitors and looking in disbelief—echoing the likely expressions of the audience—while he is watching them unfold. What’s more, it most definitely succeeds in being more “exciting,” for example, than the 1981 film “Rollover.” However, excitement is not always a good thing.
For more personality quizzes check this: Ride Along 2 Quiz.
