The Accountant (2016)

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Movie
German title The Accountant
Original title The Accountant
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2016
length 128 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
JMK 14 (TV version)
Rod
Director Gavin O'Connor
script Bill Dubuque
production Mark Williams ,
Lynette Howell Taylor
music Mark Isham
camera Seamus McGarvey
cut Richard Pearson
occupation

The Accountant is an American thriller from director Gavin O'Connor from the year 2016 . The leading roles are Ben Affleck , Anna Kendrick , JK Simmons and Jon Bernthal . The film was released in American cinemas on October 14, 2016 and in German cinemas on October 20, 2016.

action

Christian Wolff is an island gifted and math - genius who can deal much better with numbers than with people. He works under cover of a small-town tax consultancy in Plainfield , Illinois, as an accountant for some of the most dangerous underworld organizations in the world. A mysterious figure named “The Voice”, who communicates with him over the phone, gives him the job. As a child, he was diagnosed with autism and his parents had the opportunity to place him at the Harbor Neuroscience Institute in Hanover , New Hampshire . Although Wolff felt a connection with Justine, the also autistic, silent daughter of the institute's director, his father, an officer in the US Army in the field of psychological warfare , refused. He was of the opinion that his son should overcome his behavior disorder through a lot of training and self-discipline in order to better assert himself in the world. The mother could not withstand the pressure and left the family. Flashbacks show Wolff, who later also became a notable sniper , and his younger brother Braxton undergoing intensive training in martial arts .

The head of the tax investigation department of the Treasury , Ray King, knows Wolff only as "The Accountant" ("Der Buchhalter"). The King, who is about to retire, recruits the young analyst Marybeth Medina as an investigator to identify the accountant. He threatens to reveal Medina's criminal past if she refuses to cooperate. The only indications of Medina are the code names " Carl Gauss " and " Lou Carroll " as well as the sound recording of a shootout in which Wolff alone killed numerous members of the Gambino family .

After further work for the mafia Wolff takes a less dangerous job of robotics - Group Living Robotics at. Accountant Dana Cummings has discovered suspicious inconsistencies in the company. Company founder Lamar Blackburn and sister and partner Rita cooperate willingly on the investigation, while CFO Ed Chilton dismisses the financial holes as a mistake by Cummings. Through a detailed analysis of the company's finances determined Wolff that 61 million US dollars have been embezzled. He informs Dana Cummings and Rita Blackburn of his findings even before he prepares his final test report.

Meanwhile attended a hitman Chilton home. He threatens to kill Chilton and his wife if the diabetic Chilton does not overdose himself on a fatal insulin . Lamar Blackburn tells Wolff that Chilton embezzled the money and was driven to suicide out of guilt . Out of mourning over the death of his longtime friend, he orders the testing work to be stopped immediately, but pays Wolff his full fee. The perfectionist Wolff is very disturbed because he cannot finish the report. Meanwhile, Medina succeeds in isolating a soundtrack on the recording of the shooting, on which the killer can be heard - in keeping with autism-typical behavior - mumbling the nursery rhyme Solomon Grundy to himself. Coupled with the “Accountant” weakness for well-known mathematicians , she discovers his cover identity as “ Christian Wolff ” and discovers his accounting office. She finds out that Wolff has written off high tax returns with donations to the Harbor Neuroscience Institute .

After Living Robotics' investigation is complete, hired killers attempt to kill Wolff and Cummings. Wolff succeeds in killing the pursuers and saving Dana. The two go into hiding in a hotel and find out that the embezzled money was reinvested in subsidiaries to clean up Living Robotics' inventories in order to artificially increase the company value for an IPO . Wolff suspects Rita Blackburn to be behind it and wants to confront her in her house. However, he finds her dead, from which he concludes that her brother Lamar Blackburn is behind the fraud and murders.

King and Medina search Wolff's house and find evidence that he is the "Accountant" they are looking for. King reveals to Medina that he has met Wolff before and tells her what he knows about him. Wolff was in the US Army when he and his father attended the funeral of his second-married mother. There a brawl broke out in which the father was shot while trying to protect his son. Wolff went to prison and met Francis Silverberg, the accountant of the Gambinos, there. Silverberg had been recruited as an informant for the US authorities and taken into protective custody, but was later released and then tortured to death by the Gambino family. When Wolff learned of Silverberg's death in prison, he was furious, fled and, in revenge, committed the murder of the Gambinos. King was the first agent on site and Wolff could have killed him too. Wolff spared him, however, after King answered yes to his question as to whether he had been a good father. Since then, a mysterious caller has been providing Ray King with information when a customer does not comply with Wolff's moral code. King had hired Medina not to expose Wolff's identity, but to oblige her as successor and contact person for the calls.

Wolff attacks Lamar Blackburn's house, which is protected by a group of mercenaries led by the hit man. During the resulting exchange of fire, the contract killer recognizes the nursery rhyme Solomon Grundy, which Wolff recites in stressful situations, and faces him. He reveals himself to be his brother Braxton, with whom Christian no longer had contact after his father's death. After a fight they are finally settled and Braxton takes no action against the killing of Lamar Blackburn. Wolff's evidence of his criminal activities reaches Medina, who accepted King's offer and took over his post, prompting an investigation into Living Robotics . At the Harbor Neuroscience Institute , grown-up Justine works on a powerful computer and turns out to be the unknown telephone voice. In the final scene, Dana receives the Jackson Pollock painting that Wolff sent her.

production

The film was shot in Atlanta , Georgia , including at the Georgia Institute of Technology . Filming began in January 2015.

reception

Grossing results

The film grossed $ 24.7 million on the opening weekend at a production cost of $ 44 million. In total, it grossed over 86.2 million in cinemas in the United States, with worldwide revenues exceeding $ 155 million.

Reviews

The Accountant received a positive rating from 52% of the reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes , with 254 reviews rated. The bottom line is: " The Accountant discards a committed portrayal of Ben Affleck and leaves viewers with an unstructured action thriller." On Metacritic , the film scored a metascore of 51 out of 100 based on 45 reviews.

The film service saw an "accomplished mixture of psychogram and thriller, in which the bad become the good". At the same time, the film "continues to flounder morally and also often from a narrative point of view". The Cinema editorial team wrote: "The Accountant" is not a financial thriller with an incorruptible accountant as a hero. Rather, the film is a tough action riot and a tricky conspiracy thriller rolled into one. The motifs are not always entirely logical, but that doesn't detract from the entertainment value of this high-class thriller, especially since Ben Affleck seems to get better with every film. "Andreas Busche from epd Film said the motifs are" from better genre films and TV series of the last few years ”and would not come together to form a“ coherent ”story. Busche emphasized the “highly concentrated, elegant staging” by O'Connor, which at first suggests “author's claim”, but ultimately the film looks like an “over-ambitious B-movie”. Carsten Baumgardt summed up his criticism of film releases : "The plot and the figure drawing may not always be one hundred percent consistent, but the variety of ideas from Gavin O'Connor's black-humored" The Accountant "still ensures good, entertaining thriller entertainment."

continuation

At the end of June 2017 it was announced that a sequel at Warner Bros. is planned.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for The Accountant . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ Age rating for The Accountant . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ The Accountant worldwide theatrical releases on wbpsites.com, accessed September 23, 2016.
  4. ↑ The Accountant Production on imdb.com, accessed May 22, 2018.
  5. ^ The Accountant Budget and Box Office Boxofficemojo.com, accessed May 22, 2018.
  6. ^ The Accountant. In: rottentomatoes.com. Retrieved May 22, 2018 .
  7. ^ The Accountant. In: metacritic.com. Retrieved May 22, 2018 .
  8. ^ The Accountant. In: filmdienst.de. Retrieved May 22, 2018 .
  9. ^ The Accountant. In: cinema.de. Retrieved May 22, 2018 .
  10. ^ The Accountant. In: epd-film.de. Retrieved May 22, 2018 .
  11. ^ The Accountant. In: filmstarts.de. Retrieved May 22, 2018 .
  12. ↑ The Accountant 2 - Ben Affleck returns in the sequel as a deadly math genius. In: moviepilot.de. June 27, 2017. Retrieved June 27, 2017 .