The Accountant: 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Review
The Movie:
Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is a math savant with more affinity for numbers than people. Behind the cover of a small-town CPA office, he works as a freelance accountant for some of the world’s most dangerous criminal organizations. With the Treasury Department’s Crime Enforcement Division, run by Ray King (J.K. Simmons), starting to close in, Christian takes on a legitimate client: a state-of-the-art robotics company where an accounting clerk (Anna Kendrick) has discovered a discrepancy involving millions of dollars. But as Christian un-cooks the books and gets closer to the truth, it is the body count that starts to rise.
I have to give this film a whole lot of credit. This action-thriller has so many plot points involved to keep the audience guessing and it does a fantastic job at balancing them all at the same time. The story weaves so many ways and has so much mystery to its main character that almost from the start I was totally engaged and wanting to figure out what was going on. Affleck was on fire in this role. He made his character super interesting and the way that he would respond very dry and bluntly (you’ll find out why) made him come across kind of intimidating and really funny at the same time. Kendrick more or less provided the comedy relief/love interest. That’s not a bad thing either because she’s extremely good at it. During very intense situations she provides a quick quip that lightens the mood without completely deflating it. Simmons was great as well and presented himself as the usual “next month I’m retiring” kind of guy. It’s a stereotypical characterization but sometimes something like that is needed to push the story along. Very rarely will I say that from start to end I had a whole lot of fun watching a movie and this is definitely one of those rare instances. Everything about it was executed awesomely and I can see this becoming a franchise if all parties involved wanted to take it that way. Should you pick this movie up? You’re damn right you should and I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll have a great time watching it. 9/10
4K Presentation:
This release doesn’t look as crisp and clean as other ones but in a way that’s kind of a good thing. It’s my understanding that this movie was transferred from 35mm and even with it upconverted to 4K there is still some film grain there. Honestly I’m okay with it for simple fact that it feels like it should be more cinematic. Yes, I do usually say that action films look fantastic in this format but this has been the first movie (to my knowledge) that has had this kind of treatment and it looks great.
Special Features:
Inside the Man – Cast and crew discuss the character of Christian Wolff.
Behavioral Science – Various clinical professionals discuss the aspect of Affleck playing an autistic character.
The Accountant in Action – This feature looks at a lot of the action scenes as well as the fight training that Affleck had to go through.
