No Accounting for Taste

The Accountant (2016) is kind of funny - funny ha ha and peculiar. It's a slow-moving action film, about forensic accounting and autism.

The Accountant is Ben Affleck. We get to know him as a nice man who helps an older couple save some money on their taxes. The Treasury Dept knows him only by reputation, a shadowy figure who the underworld trusts to run their crooked books. J.K. Simmons has been hunting him for years, and young agent Cynthia Addai-Robinson to help.

From flashbacks, we learn about the Accountant's childhood. He is profoundly autistic, but his military father doesn't want to get him into treatment, he just wants to toughen him up, with weapons and martial arts training. Later, the adult Accountant winds up in prison, and is tutored in Evil Accounting by Jeffrey Tambor. Now, I haven't watched much Arrested Development, but just based on the memes I've seen, I can't really take him seriously as a Bernie Madoff type. YMMV.

It sort of all comes together when Affleck is auditing the books for a high tech company. As he and company accountant Anna Kendrick zero in on the problem, company, people start getting murdered, and he has to let her into his life.

So, corporate thriller, action movie, romance, family drama, and mental health tale, all rolled together. In the Movie Sign with the Mads podcast, they talk a lot about this, and I think they may have preferred more of the hardcore action. I kind of agree, but I think the balance worked pretty well, considering. The forensic accounting was a little boring - not sure it made sense, but there were lots of scenes of Affleck writing numbers on the walls and windows of a conference room. (Are we watching Numb3rs now?) Also, there's a cute beat where they try to pull Affleck off the job, but he gets anxious when he can't finish something. Autism, you know.

I think you should watch this movie, so I won't spoil the RV for you. Enjoy!