The Accountant 1 – 2016 (and 2 – 2025) – Masala Thriller(s)

Genre – Thriller

Time: Part 1: 2 Hours 2 minutes

Part 2: 2 Hours 14 minutes

Platform: Amazon Prime

Director: Gavin O’Connor (1 and 2)

Cast: Ben Affleck.  Joe Bernthal. JK Simmons. Cynthia Addai Robinson

Plot: (part 1-2016) Christian Wolff is a maths autistic savant – essentially someone who is brilliant at one subject but otherwise cant have any kind of ‘normal’ social interactions. He and his younger brother Braxton are relentlessly trained by their Army officer father to be brutal. Their mother divorces and the father takes care of them.

A grown-up Christian (Ben Affleck) is called by a company Living Robotics to check out its finances and to confirm whether a young female auditor Dana (Anna Kendrick) had made a mistake. Wading through the data overnight and with his intuitive insights, he spots the diversion of funds. The founder and CEO terminates his services citing the suicide of one of their senior managers, who authorised the missing funds.

Ray King, Treasury Director, has his senior analyst Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) conduct an investigation into how the mysterious man known as Wollf had laundered the dirty money of many criminals and to find out his whereabouts.

Meanwhile mysterious men are out to kill Dana and Chris saves them in time. The leader of the men wonders why his men are failing and who is the man who saved Dana ….

Guilty admission.

I immensely enjoyed The Accountant Part 1. It has everything that we want in a decent conspiracy thriller. (All filmy tech barons are nasty money grubbing dirty tricks operators who will do anything to be on top of the money pile; right?).

A flawed hero – in this case, autism. An innocent heroine. A nasty villain (or is he?). The honourable, decent, socially conscious CEO of the robotics company who – since John Lithgow plays him – is as crooked as they come (I actually wondered how the Lithgow character is so nice about everything; who says only Indian actors are typecast).

The autistic savant who repeatedly saves innocents while ploughing through their enemies like a hot knife through butter.

Gunplay – there is a long shootout in the end with enough body count to satisfy the blood lust among those who want to see ‘action’ scenes.

All in all, this is a thoroughly enjoyable ‘action’ film with loads of intelligence , a conspiracy thriller with a well written script. Performances are okay but Ben Affleck really takes the cake as the savant who can’t make eye contact, is a hopeless monomaniac and can’t have any other semblance of normalcy.

Script – 4 out of 5

Story – 4 out of 5

Direction – 4 out of 5

Photography – 4 out of 5

Total – 4 out of 5

Part 2 (2025) – Amazon Prime – The man who had taken a contract out on Chris was his own brother Braxton. They combine to track down a female assassin who is the key to the death of the retired Ray King. While assisted by Medina, the mysterious female assassin also is competing with them. There is also a cartel of Mexican illegal immigrant smugglers whose nasties are leaving a trail of death and destruction and which the two brothers must shut down

I have given away the entire story; sadly we know the plot within the first 20 minutes and how the film will develop. The charm of Part 1 is missing. The forced meeting of the two brothers and both trying to be part of a “family” is not exactly interesting. While the brothers are trying to bond – two assassins want to bond, duh – , the parallel track of the cartel, assassins, Medina’s investigations, etc – all look like too much masala being added to the mixture to make it more edible and tastier. The humour falls flat at times – this consisting of the maths savant trying to lead a normal life by ‘binding’ with his self styled “psycho brother”.

Not as engaging or as interesting as part I.  Utterly predictable. Watch it if you just want to ‘’complete’ the series (hopefully there won’t be a part 3)

Script – 3 out of 5

Story – 3 out of 5

Direction – 4 out of 5

Photography – 4 out of 5

 Total – 3.5 out of 5