Movie Review : The Accountant (2016)

Synopsis

Once The Treasury Department pursues an accountant with underworld ties, he evades them by taking a legitimate client – but when he learns millions of dollars are missing from the company, can he uncover the culprit before the authorities catch up with him?

Story

Christopher Wolff (Affleck) runs a rather non-descript accounting firm in a strip mall in the Midwest; it returns a modest profit, but where he really gets most of his extremely substantial income is by plying his trade for some very high-powered international criminals.  Wolff works for many dangerous men and given his own extensive training in martial arts and weapons, he happens to be pretty dangerous himself.  Why is Wolff able to command such high prices for his services?  Obviously, it’s because he’s quite good.  However, he’s so good at his chosen occupation because of his disability:  he’s a mathematical genius who’s been treated for autism since childhood.

But Wolff’s life is far from trouble-free.  The United States government is hot on his tail.  In order to prosecute these criminals, they have to follow the money – and all of their money leads to Wolff.  As a result, the Treasury Department is tasked with investigating; lead officer Ray King (J.K. Simmons) recruits Special Agent Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) to head up the case, which could turn out to redefine their careers if it’s handled properly.  Medina immediately gets to work on trying to find who exactly is helping these malefactors launder their money.

Once Wolff learns the government may be pursuing him, he tries to drop off their radar by taking a more standard consulting job at a robotics firm.  The owner of the company (John Lithgow) hired him to ascertain where and how millions of his organization’s dollars disappeared.  Helping Wolff in his research is an employee (Anna Kendrick) who initially reported the discrepancy.  But when Wolff figures out that the root cause of the missing funds is something more nefarious than just a simple bookkeeping error, will he be willing to risk his life to bring the real culprit to justice?

Positive

One thing that is very visible from the film The Accountant is how extensively this film to prioritize the character development of each character in this film. The film is well able to show the sides of Chritian Wolff where he as a person with autism disorder wants "normal" things like socializing with a friend or co-worker, but because of the disorder he becomes awkward. The character of Wolff is also very well made where his past is very influential in his present self.

It seems to me that I always mention a specific mental disorder that is autism which is certainly an obstacle that is not wanted by anyone, but it should be said that this film can very well be able to "simulate" people with autism disabilities. Perhaps this is supported by the performance of Ben Affleck is very spectacular. Each expression, dialogue, intonation of voice, and motion style is very selling character that he played. In this film there is no performance below average - average. All the players in this movie can imaged his character well, although his character only appears briefly as a backstory character.

From the story side of the movie The Accountant has a fairly complex story where the film is jumping - jump time from the past to the present in some places and a fairly long storyline so it takes the attention of the audience. So I need to warn that this film needs attention from us as audiences to be understood more deeply. The way the director and the film crew filmed The Accountant is very good because each action scene can be seen clearly without a shaky cam, each scene interactions between characters, individual scenes that show Wolff characters deeper and panning scenes taken well. No camera shooting looks awkward, every direction the camera imaging an emotion or a situation that is happening well.

Negative

Now we go to the negative side of this film where although above I say that this movie has a good story, but there are times - the time where the film was too long. There are some scenes that existed in this film that can be honestly deleted and ultimately will not have a major impact on the overall story of this movie. Plus the pacing of this film slowly that can cause the film audiences bored and have a bad impression on the first 30 minutes of this film. In addition, action scenes may be for some people can be spelled out too far away from each other so you could say pacing from this movie is rather uneven. One more thing is that at the end of the film ends unfortunately there is a very expository exposition dialogue that may be for some people appreciate the exposition of such a story but is not it better if the story is exposed to the scenes and dialogue that exists. The problem is that the filmmakers have shown that they are able to create an interesting scene with dialogue that can absorb the audience. This causes the scene of this exposition to feel forced. Like on the steps of the executive hollywood says that the film is too complex and needs an exposition for the audience to understand. This honestly shows that the films from the beginning already appreciate the audience by providing interesting dialogue and scenes and complex stories eventually sell themselves to the status of generic films that do not need the attention of the audience.

Advice

The Accountant would be more entertaining if it just acknowledged its own nerdy outlandishness. Still, it’s something to watch Affleck play a man who has trouble expressing his feelings and struggles to read those of others.

Source :
https://thescenes.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/reviewtheaccountant/
http://virtual-nihilist.blogspot.co.id/2016/10/the-accountant-movie-review.html
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-accountant
http://time.com/4529425/the-accountant-ben-affleck-review-2/