(Credit: Netflix)

The Accountant can be a confusing movie to follow, with its back-and-forth parallel storylines kept largely separate, leaving us to wonder why they’re both told simultaneously. Gavin O’Connor’s 2016 action thriller revolves around Ben Affleck’s anti-hero Christian Wolff, an apparently autistic criminal with a knack for numbers.

Flashbacks to Christian’s childhood diagnosis of autism intentionally leave a lot unsaid, particularly with the pay-off a twist in the tail in mind. And so, we see various shot’s Christian’s brother Braxton looking affected by the trauma around him but remaining silent, until the explosive finale, when the two brothers meet again on opposite sides of the same crime.

Meanwhile, JK Simmons’ role as the retiring Treasury Director obsessed with tracking Christian down is largely superfluous. The big reveal that King is actually getting tip-offs from Affleck’s character, in a scene that involves an enormous amount of show-and-tell exposition, winds its way through several different parts of the narrative in quick succession, but doesn’t hit the mark with any of them.

Still, all-action sequences and the curiosity factor of having a savant central character pushed The Accountant up the Netflix charts earlier this year, where the movie’s been riding high ever since. And Affleck has suggested that Wolff could be the most complex part he’s ever played, given the need to act out the impact of the character’s neurodivergence on his behaviour with subtlety and nuance.

What about Christian’s audit, then?

The crux of the film is Wolff’s investigation into irregularities an in-house accountant, played by Anna Kendrick has spotted with the books of tech firm Living Robotics. His brilliance with numbers and background auditing criminal organisations to root out inside embezzlers without alerting the authorities to their activities make him the ideal candidate to unearth the person responsible.

In one night, Christian goes through 15 years of company accounts, and uncovers the embezzlement of almost $62 million. He first suspects Living Robotics CFO Ed Chilton is behind the theft, before he’s disposed of in a murder made to look like suicide. Then Rita Blackburn, the sister of the company’s CEO becomes his prime target for questioning, until she too winds up dead.

There’s only one person left at the top of the firm who could be responsible. The CEO himself Lamar Blackburn has stolen his own company’s money. But when Christian goes to confront the villain of the piece, he encounters his own long-lost brother in cahoots with the criminal mastermind. After a brawl in which old grudges resurface, the two reconcile.

Blackburn emerges to taunt Christian, claiming that what the accountant does is of no importance whereas Blackburn himself is advancing the development of biotech invaluable to humanity. “I restore lives,” he insists. “Do you even know what that’s like?” Wolff responds by shooting him dead, like a true hero.

As confused and confusing as it may be, The Accountant’s worth untangling for those who do watch it. A warning, though. All the time in the world wouldn’t be enough to work out Christian Wolff’s “moral code”.