Movie Review: Inferno and The Accountant

By Syed Ebrahim Al-Idrus

THE ACCOUNTANT
Action/Drama
NC16: Violence & Some Coarse Language
Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons
128 min

Rating: four stars

This summer’s blockbuster hit Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice brought us Ben Affleck punching and shooting mercenaries as the heroic masked vigilante Batman.

If you haven’t already had your fill of his large brooding frame, get ready for more action as Affleck takes down some hired thugs in The Accountant.

Affleck plays Christian Wolff, an autistic accountant who balances the books for gangsters and terrorists.

He has difficulty expressing himself but manages to stay alive in this deadly line of work, all thanks to his intensive military training and his almost superhuman martial arts skills, which help him transform objects around him into lethal weapons.

This time round, Wolff gets hired by a large public technology company to clean up its books.

But things quickly go awry when he discovers an error of roughly US$61 million dollars, and company employees start being assassinated.

Along with Dana (Anna Kendrick), a quirky company accountant who also spots the error, the duo take it upon themselves to find the truth about what is really going on in the company.

The story has its riveting moments with Affleck’s stunning action scenes, but suffers from poor pacing.

The bulk of the movie is dedicated to long montages of number crunching and technical terms that may satisfy the inner nerd in you, but that the average movie-goer would not fully understand.

The plot also seemed derivative of Matt Damon’s Bourne series, which does hand-to-hand combat and espionage better.

In comparison, The Accountant’s storyline ends up being predictable.

But the film has its saving graces.

The stellar casting of J.K. Simmons and Cynthia Addai-Robinson (of Arrow fame) who play two government treasury agents trying to catch the elusive “Accountant” kept tensions running high throughout the show with their excellent chemistry.

Seeing Simmons and Affleck on screen together is an exciting tease to what audiences can expect when they play Commissioner Gordon and Bruce Wayne/Batman respectively in the upcoming Justice League movie.

Another strength is the film’s lasting message about how one should celebrate differences and not underestimate people with neurological disorders.

The autistic Wolff shows us that disorder or not, he can still be the best version of himself.
Affleck’s compelling yet subtle performance of autism makes this at least a matinee viewing.

INFERNO
Action/Crime
PG13
Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Irrfan Khan
121 min

HUNTED: Robert Langdon and Sienna Brooks hunt for clues within the Palazzo Vecchio while attempting to evade assassins. PHOTO: SONY PICTURES

Rating: Three stars

Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is back in the third instalment of the surprisingly robust Robert Langdon franchise, which is based on the famous series of books by Dan Brown.

Director Ron Howard also returns with the gripping plot of a world famous symbology professor attempting to stop a plague. Created by a billionaire radical, the plague will annihilate half the world’s population in 48 hours.

Joining the ride is Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), the doe-eyed doctor who tells Langdon that he has a head injury and amnesia after he wakes up in a hospital in Florence.

Not only will he have to solve the upcoming puzzle to save billions of lives, he would also have to piece together his own scattered memory.

Inevitably, as with all adaptations of Dan Brown novels, there is an incorporation of religious philosophy, art, and most importantly, museums from around the world.

This time, the focus is on the image of Dante’s version of hell, the Inferno.

The film takes us all over Europe as the two attempt to decode the clues within the image of Dante’s Inferno to stop the coming catastrophe.

The film is unapologetically fast-paced from the get-go, and only pauses for viewers to marvel at the sights of the majestic artwork from the many palazzos in Italy.

But it does take a few silly turns as moments of the film intended to be dramatic and revelational — notably the execution of the plans by the radicalists — elicited laughter from the audience.

The supporting cast was refreshingly diverse, adding to the international appeal of the film.

This ranges from Bollywood superstar Irrfan Khan, heading the nefarious Provost organization trying get their hands on the plague, and rising French star Omar Sy playing an agent from the World Health Organisation tasked to reach Langdon before the Provost assassins do.

Inferno has a high bar to live up to as a sequel to Angels & Demons — the strongest movie of the franchise.

But while it does not match up to its predecessor in terms of intrigue and suspense, it more than makes up with its high-octane action and breathtaking cinematography.