The Accountant – 2.5 stars

The premise of this movie, and the ensuing byzantine plot, are so audacious that it almost makes up for being such a slick piece of crap.

Ben Affleck is an accountant. But not your everyday accountant. He is autistic, but has had the more extreme manifestations of that condition beaten out of him by his rigid, military father. Accordingly, he can function, and function he does, rather highly. He has millions of dollars. He owns a Jackson Pollock. He has gold bullion. He can shoot a watermelon from a mile away.

He works in a strip mall as an accountant, but when he is not doing the books for local farmers, he is doing them for large, dirty multinational corporations while ratting out their wrongdoing to the Department of the Treasury.

The only really good things I can say about this movie are that it is watchable in an aghast, mouth-open kind of way. Affleck, playing a character who is struggling to convey emotion, appears to be on the verge of laughing out loud every scene. As every scene gets progressively funnier and funnier, his reserve becomes more impressive.

It’s not good but marginally entertaining.