Monday, February 13, 2017

3 Short Paragraphs: The Accountant

2016, Gavin O'Connor (Jane Got a Gun) -- download

There, that is what I was talking about. Let's do a crime thriller and not try to drop it into the Bourne paradigm. O'Connor, who has been working steadily, if under the radar, since the 90s brings us a methodical action thriller about an Autistic accountant cum killer. The movie is written by Bill Dubuque, someone who will be worthy watching as this was his baby, all by himself, both story and screenplay. That the movie is about a man with an extreme sense of focus is nice, considering we got a movie from one person, not a committee.

I digress; I am never so focused. Ben Affleck is Christian Wolff, an account working of ZZZ Accounting in a strip mall. He is also a higher functioning autistic of extreme intelligence. JK Simmons and Cynthia Addai-Robinson (Amanda Waller, Arrow) are the Treasury agents looking into the actions of a mysterious man, an accountant for drug cartels and foreign terrorists, who comes in as forensic consultant and helps launder their money. To get some heat off him, Wolff's assistance suggests a legit job, doing some forensic work at a robotics company, after a minor accountant in the firm noticed some irregularities. Of course, that change in behaviour puts an immense amount of chaos in front of Christian.

This movie was thoughtful, and that is all too often left behind in movies these days. We get just the right amount of background to all the main characters; just the right amount. There isn't a lot of extraneous details given over to style or a romance sub-plot (though it's there) or exposition or even emotional outbursts. Like Christian himself is all about and only about the details, so is the movie. The movie likes to follow all the details and put them together, such as our understanding of Christian's relationship with his father and his brother. Or his desire to be more than his closed off self, but still be completely unable to. We get a real anti-hero in Christian, not the current American ideal of one who "does what he has to", but a challenged man who does horrific things but we cannot help but identify with, and admire.

No comments:

Post a Comment