The Accountant

Really liked your review of this film and agree with most of what you mentioned...was especially pleased with your mention of my favorite scene in the film, where Ben tries to explain his autism to Anna Kendrick while she's trying to relate to him telling the story of how she earned her prom dress. In a movie filled with slam-bang action, I was a little startled that this scene was my favorite in the film but it was.

Yeah, "Crazy Eddie and the Panama Pump", perhaps cinema's most jarring segue. And the incorporation of the "edited" Pollock, made ultra-relevant to the overarching autism theme, may well set a record for being the longest and best cinematic hidden-in-plain-sight "secret". I liked every scene the two of them were in, but I gotta stop re-watching it so much, I cringe every time I see a Pitch Perfect 1, 2 or 3 poster. What a waste.
"Why would your clients follow you? You're an accountant."--one accountant to another.

Yeah, I know, most people don't notice much beyond the action. What kicked it over the top for me was everything going on with the Pollard painting.

I, too was underwhelmed by the Pitch Perfect films, saw the first two and had no desire to sit through the third.

This is a puzzle in the form of one of the best action movies in a couple of years. If you don't like puzzles, you won't like this much. And to emphasize the point, the autistic-savant main character, Chris Wolff (Affleck), is shown at the start as a child putting together a jigsaw puzzle, backside up, as fast as he can lay them down. But this is an action movie with a lot of meat on it. Perfect casting, an ironclad story, lots of off-hand/dark humor, and an important message that's handled perfectly instead of presenting it as a cause.

Some people don't like Anna Kendrick in this part, but if opposites attract, she's the outgoing spark that matches his autism. She's the catalyst to the only scene in the movie where Wolff gets truly excited about something. The lunch scene is exquisite, as is the one on the couch where Wolff delivers these lines, "I have a problem socializing
with people...but I want to", soon followed by the most jolting segue ever, "Crazy Eddie and the Panama Pump!"

The most important piece of this puzzle is a painting. Two are used in the story, a Renoir, and one of Jackson Pollock's cynical abstract abominations (in my not so humble opinion) which a little research revealed was titled "Free Form". But the one in the movie has a small alteration, the profile of an eye looking askance from the center of the surface, which jumps out at you for the 3 seconds they show it on screen. But it isn't in the original, and it changes everything. It hearkens to a line from the song at the end, "I can get through the wall if you give me a door." Instead of being pure red, white and black noise, an eye (of an autistic?) is added at the center of that noise. It's probably the harshest form of critique, to show something of what Pollock could/should have done, and do it for him.

Wolff's mentor in prison tells him to find just one person he can trust. But he finds three. There are several reveals, but the story behind the SIRI (Wolff's artificially intelligent personal assistant) is a real kicker.

I agree with the public on this one which gives it a high rating as opposed to the critics who don't, for reasons I can't fathom. When there's a split, I'm usually on that side. This is the director's (Gavin O'Connor's) second major film, after "Warrior", which was only OK, but this is a masterpiece, again, IMNTBHO. The thing with the painting and how it was used in the overall thread on autism is what kicked it up into that category for me. I saw the alteration on the first viewing but didn't find out about the rest of the story until my third viewing.

Yup loved this movie thanks for the review!