Imagine for a moment that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s agent received a script called The Accountant in 1992 because its producer and director hoped against hope he would star in it. In this film, Schwarzenegger would play an emotionless genius who cooks the books for evil governments and crime syndicates, having been trained to do so by a military-man father who recognized his son would have a tough time of it in the ordinary world.
The plot would be full of twists and turns, as Schwarzenegger would take on a legitimate job examining the accounts of a robotics company and discover financial malfeasance that places a pretty young accountant in jeopardy and brings him face-to-face with the only person he still loves.
“Wait,” Arnold’s agent would say. “Sure, it’s not a bad script, this thing by Bill Dubuque. I mean, it’s not in the least believable, but neither were Commando or Predator. And the director, Gavin O’Connor, has made a few good movies in the past. But this accountant part: Where’s the fun in it? So he’s supposed to have autism, like Rain Man, but at least Rain Man watched Judge Wapner on The People’s Court and counted toothpicks on the floor. This guy blows on his fingers. Yeah, that’s an exciting bit of business.
“I mean, if Arnold is going to play an accountant who kills people, shouldn’t he at least get a few zingers? You know, like he faces down a bad guy and says, ‘Carry this forward’ before he shoots the guy in the head. Or when he’s double-crossed by a client, he mows him down with a machine gun and then when the client is dead, he says, ‘Consider that an audit.’ Or when a hit man tries to get a drop on him, he throws the guy into the Grand Canyon and says, ‘That’s what I call a deduction.’
“Also, what’s with the character’s name? Christian Wolff? Yeah, I know it’s an alias the character uses, the name of a famous mathematician. But he’s an accountant. His name should be Morris Fishbein. Arnold Schwarzenegger playing Morris Fishbein—see, that’s fun! Gimme some fun, for Chrissake!”
The Accountant just came out. It stars Ben Affleck in the dullest performance he’s given since he was Batman in Batman v. Superman. What? Batman v. Superman only came out six months ago? Yes, we’re talking about two of the dullest performances ever in the same year. It’s as if Martin O’Malley had run for president twice. And I like Affleck, who’s proven himself a far more interesting performer in the past (in movies like Chasing Amy and Changing Lanes) than he’s allowed himself to be for years. Here, playing someone with Asperger’s, he doesn’t look people in the eye and acts awkwardly; every acting choice he makes is the most obvious and the least unexpected he can muster.
There’s a stark contrast here between Affleck’s lifelessness and the electric charge produced every time a little-known actor named Jon Bernthal is on screen. Bernthal plays another figure in the shadowy world of international espionage inhabited by The Accountant; his connection to Affleck is almost instantly apparent to any half-observant viewer. The revelation of the connection at the movie’s climax is treated, hilariously, as though it were the moment in Fight Club when we discover Ed Norton and Brad Pitt are the same person. Bernthal is smooth-talking and funny and menacing, and he’s such a pleas-ure to watch (along with the ever-thrilling J. K. Simmons) that it’s a total drag whenever the action turns back to Affleck.
Arnold Schwarzenegger became an onscreen quipster of violence precisely because he couldn’t act, and because he was so inherently ludicrous as a physical human object that he was already half-cartoon. He was letting us know he was in on the joke.
Affleck takes his job here so seriously that he doesn’t know a movie about an accountant who is also an international man of intrigue and can shoot like the terrorist in Day of the Jackal, kill people with a single kick, and take out 10 members of the Gambino crime family in a matter of seconds is a preposterous contrivance. When you don’t laugh with the audience, the audience laughs at you, which is what happens at the end of The Accountant.
Consider this review an audit.
John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, is The Weekly Standard‘s movie critic.
