The Accountant 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Review
Brad Sturdivant
January 14th, 2017
Ben Affleck is Christian Wolff, a mysterious figure that is really, really good at accounting and exceptional at fighting and shooting people. He spends his life balancing the books for bad guys and staying on the run from law enforcement, including Treasury director Ray (Simmons), who may or may not really be after him. Things go south for Christian when he takes a job balancing the books for Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow) and uncovers some scary truths about what Lamar is up to and what he’s capable of. Things get even worse when Christian takes a liking to Dana (Kendrick), a young financial analyst working at Lamar’s company.
A few hours with the script for THE ACCOUNTANT and I think most of us could hack away a much better film. THE ACCOUNTANT felt like a situation where everyone might have been trying too hard to make a movie that just wasn’t there and the result is a muddled film full of holes and unanswered questions. The idea to have a long, intricate backstory with Christian and his brother is fine, but that subplot dominated a lot of the film and since it wasn’t explored properly, the audience ended up with more questions about Christian and his family than what the film had time to answer. So the “payoff” was anticlimactic (and predictable) and left the audience frustrated. The same issue came up with Christian and his relationship with Dana. The filmmakers had established Christian as cold and distant, then he suddenly takes a liking to Dana. I understand his desire to save her, but the next decisions were confusing, especially when they just decided to have Christian up and leave (something he should have done earlier). It was yet another example of how the filmmakers included something in the film that wasn’t thought out or fully explored and ended up being a source of frustration. There are plenty more examples (why did Lamar hire a super dangerous accountant when a standard accountant would have given him what he wanted without all the death?), but the gist is that there are numerous problems with the film.
All of the problems lead to the frustrating realization that without them, this might have been a decent film. Ben Affleck can’t be anything other than Ben Affleck, but he did okay here, at least well enough to carry the film from one situation to another. The basic idea of an autistic boy growing up to do accounting for bad guys is a good start and had plenty of cool directions it could go. Even though my eyes were rolling from all of the plot holes, the actors involved did a decent job and director Gavin O’Connor was efficient enough to keep things moving quickly so we wouldn’t get too bored.
We got ARGO and THE TOWN, but Ben Affleck is having a really rough time at the box office lately. THE ACCOUNTANT is going to be more fodder for his critics, which is a shame because I like having Ben Affleck back on the big screen. But THE ACCOUNTANT has a lot of problems and is probably better suited to fill the void on late night cable.
4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY REVIEW
Video: THE ACCOUNTANT is yet another title where the differences between the 4K and the Blu-ray are going to be minimal, mainly because the movie was shot on film with a 2K transfer. That means the beauty of the 4K upgrade is in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I think the upgrades are minimal. Details become more evident thanks to the HDR in the darker scenes, such as in Christian’s trailer and during the final showdown. The 4K stands out during the closeups and in brightly lit scenes, but there’s nothing in the presentation that’s going to blow you away. As I’ve said before, this isn’t a knock on the format, it’s just the best you’re going to get with the source material.
Audio: The 4K UHD includes the same DTS track from the Blu-ray.
This title was reviewed using a Samsung UBD-K8500 with a Sony XBR75X850C TV.
There are no 4K exclusive features included on the 4K disc, but it does include a copy of the Blu-ray.
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