Far-fetched actioner is pretty good trash until an overloaded third act sinks from facile explanations, dovetailed family revelations & conveyor-belt shoot-outs. Hard to shake the feeling this one started as something a bit less scattered.* As it stands, megger Gavin O’Connor & writer Bill Dubuque got BOURNE on the brain during development, THE BOURNE AUTISTIC ACCOUNTANT? With Ben Affleck as a high-functioning autistic genius, a super-secret superstar CPA who finds missing funds & cash channels for corporations, mobsters, high-tech entrepreneurs, even middle-class home owners when not honing his martial arts & sharpshooting skills. (But can he cook?) No ‘idiot savant,’ he’s picked up enough social niceties to pass as a nearly regular guy while digesting years of financial reports in a single bound. But with great success comes great enemies: hit squads and Fed Agents on his tail. And not just for him, the nice gal in accounting who first spotted ‘irregularities’ is also in danger and needs his protection. Now he’s the ‘Gallant’ Autistic Accountant. Affleck, who hasn’t had a lot of good innings lately, is just right here, physically massive/believably smart; coming off better than girl-in-trouble Anna Kendrick whose actorly pauses & detailed approach to character don’t really fit this kind of film. Best to phone it in (see Fed Agent J.K. Simmons & corporate baddie John Lithgow) or stick with stock poses & reaction shot clichés (see everyone else).
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Years before this got made, Dubuque’s original script hit the so-called Hollywood ‘BlackList’ of top-rated unsold scripts. Was it originally more of a RAINMAN meets THE FIRM kind of thing? Did Affleck push it into a ‘Bourne’ mold? Or was it always designed as action franchise fodder? (The inevitable sequel already in the works.)
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