The Accountant

Ben Affleck is Christian Wolff, a man of many aliases and quite a whizz at cooking the books for any major league crook who wants to launder a great deal of illegally-made money. Known as "The Accountant," his autism makes him an obsessively detailed numbers man, but it's his schizophrenia that makes him enjoy being a ruthless gung-ho, gun-toting killer who has no hesitation about seeing off anyone in his way.

When Christian was a kid and first diagnosed with a severe form of Aspergers syndrome, his military father overruled his mother about getting specialized therapy and instead whisked Christian and his sibling off to Japan to literally beat some toughness into him.

When we first meet Christian as an adult, he has transformed himself into a nerdy looking accountant working out of a suburban strip mall doing the taxes of local farmers. It is, however, all a front for his real life as a pumped-up machismo guy who works as analytical auditor for hire. His clients are some heavy-hitter companies who need their real wealth hidden. How he gets his clients is one of the facts conveniently left vague, but he ends up at Living Robotics where Dana (Anna Kendrick), a junior bookkeeper, has stumbled across a whole tranche of missing money in the company's accounts.

It takes Christian no time to locating the loss who may be responsible for the loss, but at the same time a mysterious gang have also reached the same conclusion and they end up dispatching the culprit in their own way. That puts Dana and Christian at risk, too, and if that is not enough, he is also being tracked down by a federal agent, as the Treasury Department have been following his criminal activities for some time now and are gradually closing in.

Written by Bill Dubuque and directed by Gavin O'Connor, this fast-paced thriller offers the perfect role for Affleck, who can convincingly downplay his rugged look when it suits him. It's a very interesting perspective, and in fact the best parts of the movie are when he has this logical, straight-faced, deadly serious attitude about even the most trivial things. Deliberately avoiding filling in all the details of the plot strands adds to the intrigue, and allows us to be totally surprised by the unexpected twist at the end.

Wolfe doesn't interact well with other people at all, so Dana as the potential love interest doesn't have much chance, but Anna Kendrick does fill her shoes beautifully. There is a sterling supporting cast that includes JK Simmons as the chief treasury agent, plus Jeffrey Tambor, John Lithgow and Jean Smart in cameo roles. The only other significant performance is by Jon Bernthal as Wolff's older sibling.

What spoils this movie is the end; it finishes off with an overly-long and very bloody gun battle. However, regardless of the finale, die-hard Affleck fans will love seeing him shine in this, especially as he is so good at playing bad.