The Accountant(2016)

Plot Summary

• Christian 'Chris' Wolff (Ben Affleck), a mental calculator, works as a forensic accountant, tracking insider financial deceptions for numerous criminal enterprises. His clients are brokered to him via phone by a woman's voice, which originates from a restricted number. As an auditor of criminal enterprises, he accepts payment in various non-cash forms such as rare comics, gold bricks, and paintings by famous artists. Pursuing him is Raymond 'Ray' King (J.K. Simmons), the director of FinCEN in the Treasury Department, who recognizes Christian by the alias "The Accountant." King blackmails young data analyst Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) into helping him identify and arrest the Accountant prior to his retirement, threatening to expose her undeclared criminal past (for the felony of lying on a federal employment application) if she refuses. King's only leads are Christian's numerous cover names.As a child, Christian had been diagnosed with a high-functioning form of autism and was offered an opportunity to live at Harbor Neuroscience Institute in New Hampshire. Although Christian had bonded with Justine (Alison Wright), the mute daughter of the institute's director, his father declined, believing that Christian should overcome the hardships inherent in his condition. The pressure of raising a special-needs child later drove Christian's mother to leave him and his Neuro-Typical younger brother, Braxton. Their father, an army psychological warfare officer, arranged for them to receive extensive military training around the world, which Christian now uses to protect himself in his dangerous life.The voice gives Christian his next assignment, auditing robotics corporation Living Robotics, whose in-house accountant, Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick), has found suspicious financial discrepancies. The company's CEO, Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow), and his sister and associate Rita Blackburn (Jean Smart) willingly cooperate with Christian's investigation, while CFO Ed Chilton (Andy Umberger) dismisses Dana's findings as a mistake. However, after Dana provides him with the company's records, Christian quickly discovers that $61 million has been embezzled from the company. The following night, Chilton, who is diabetic, is confronted in his home by a hit-man (Jon Bernthal), who forces him to self-administer a fatal insulin overdose. Later, Lamar surmises to Christian that Chilton embezzled the money and was driven to suicide out of guilt. Upset by Chilton's death, Lamar closes the investigation, leaving Christian distraught from unfinished work.Meanwhile, Medina realizes Christian's cover identities, including his current name, are all famous mathematicians (Carl Gauss, Lou Carroll, and Christian Wolff). Using facial recognition to track the Accountant leads her to a shootout in which several members of the Gambino crime family have been killed. Analyzing a sound recording, Medina isolates Christian's voice, determining that he is muttering the nursery rhyme Solomon Grundy to himself, a behavior consistent with autism spectrum disorder. The trail leads her to the modest accounting office that Christian uses as a cover: ZZZ Accounting, in Plainfield, Illinois, dividing his profits through four cash-only businesses in his block. She learns that Christian has written off hefty tax returns with donations to the Harbor Neuroscience Institute.Christian and Dana are targeted for assassination, but Christian kills his own pursuers and rescues Dana, taking her to the trailer where he keeps the only things he values, including an original Jackson Pollock painting among his non-cash payments. While in hiding, they realize that the embezzled money was reinvested in affiliated companies in order to raise Living Robotics' stock price. Concluding that Rita is behind everything, Christian goes to her house, only to find her dead, murdered by the hit-man, who escapes just as Christian is arriving. Thus, Lamar is exposed as the real mastermind.King and Medina arrive at Christian's house and find evidence (cameras hidden in birdhouses and an M134 mini-gun in the garage) that he is the Accountant. King reveals that Christian had been arrested after he started a melee at his remarried mother's funeral that led to his father's death, taking a deputy's bullet meant for Christian. In jail, Christian had been mentored by Francis Silverberg (Jeffrey Tambor), a former accountant and fixer for the Gambino crime family, who subsequently became an informant for the United States government. King was the Treasury Agent assigned to Silverberg's case and he doesn't believe Silverberg's story. Silverberg is thus released from jail, losing the only protection he had from the Gambino family. He is tortured to death by the Gambino family, which drives an enraged Christian to escape from jail and exact revenge on the people responsible.King confides to Medina that he was present at the shootout and that Christian spared his life after questioning him about being a "good dad." Afterward, King was contacted by the voice and provided with evidence Christian had compiled on criminals who violated his moral code, helping King rise to his position of director. King tells Medina that her investigation of the Accountant has been a test, and she has been selected to replace King, after his retirement, as the voice's contact in the Treasury Department.Christian attacks Lamar's mansion and kills the mercenary guards led by the hit-man. After the shootout, the hit-man recognizes the nursery rhyme that Christian mutters to himself as he tends to his wounds. He confronts Christian and reveals himself to be Braxton (his younger brother), who had become estranged after their mother's funeral. Still resentful towards their mother for leaving, Braxton blames Christian for getting their father killed. The two reconcile after a hand-to-hand fight, and Lamar shows himself to chastise Christian. After Christian proceeds to kill Lamar without objection from Braxton, the two amiably agree to meet up another time. Later, the voice relays Christian's evidence of Lamar's criminal activities to Medina, who has accepted King's offer, and she dismantles Living Robotics. Christian then bids farewell to Dana by sending her the Pollock (covered up by the painting Dogs Playing Poker, a reference to their initial conversation), and leaves to find Braxton.In a scene at the Harbor Neuroscience Institute, the voice is revealed to be a computer-generated voice from a powerful computer, given to the Institute as a donation by Christian. The computer is used by a (still mute) adult Justine to communicate, and also fulfill her duties as Christian's partner.

Storyline

• Christian Wolff 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, starting to close in, Christian takes on a legitimate client: a state-of-the-art robotics company where an accounting clerk has discovered a discrepancy involving millions of dollars. But as Christian uncooks the books and gets closer to the truth, it is the body count that starts to rise. — Happy_Evil_Dude Christian Wolff is an efficient accountant that is usually hired to find financial deceptions and embezzlement for criminal organizations. His point of contact is a woman's voice by phone and the means of payment are sometimes valuable paintings or gold bars instead of money. Christian was an autistic child that received a rigid military training with his brother Braxton from their paranoid military father. The director of the Treasury Department, Raymond "Ray" Kinghas, been unsuccessfully hunting The Accountant for a long period and he blackmails the efficient analyst Marybeth Medina to identify who he is before his retirement. When the accountant, Dana Cummings, finds an embezzlement of 61 million-dollars in the Living Robotics, Christian is hired to audit the company by the owner Lamar Blackburn and his sister Rita Blackburn. The financial director Ed Chilton tells that Dana committed a mistake but soon Christian checks the books and confirms the embezzlement. During the night, Chilton is murdered, as if he had committed suicide, and Lamar finishes the audit affecting the fact that Christian has not finished his work. Soon Dana and Christian are hunted down by hitmen and Christian protects her. Meanwhile Medina finds his true identity and Christian is hunted by Ray and the FBI. Who might be the person behind the embezzlement? — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil The U.S. Treasury Department is searching for a man who is the accountant to several global crime figures. They know him simply as The Accountant. The man himself is living a fairly inconspicuous existence as a practicing accountant. He is hired by Living Robotics, a tech firm, to go through their accounts after a junior accountant found some abnormalities. What he finds makes him a marked man. — grantss Christian Wolff, only the latest alias he has used over the course of his life, owns and operates his own small accounting firm in Plainfield, Illinois. He is a high level autistic, who is able to control his need for strict order, routine, and the completion of tasks, and his natural inability to tolerate extreme external stimuli, through medication and a daily regimen designed to withstand such. His father, an Army colonel, made him and his younger brother, one of the few people to who he has always had a natural affinity, go through extreme physical and mental training, such as in the martial arts, when they were children so that they could defend themselves against any bullying specifically against Chris. Chris is also a savant when it comes to numbers, mathematics and spotting discrepancies in order. While Chris does have some legitimate accounting clients in Plainfield, his storefront is largely just a cover for how he makes most of his wealth - which is vast - as a forensic accounting consultant, usually to criminal organizations who are looking for any internal discrepancies i.e. if anyone on the inside is skimming off the top. On the advice of his unseen female associate, with who he communicates solely via electronic means, Chris takes a legitimate consulting job with Living Robotics, founded and still owned and run by Lamar Blackburn and his sister Rita, when one of their low level accountants, Dana Cummings, notices what she believes are some discrepancies in the company's financials over the course of years. Unknown to Chris when he accepts this job, his taking it, places his and Dana's lives in jeopardy, she another of those few people in life to whom he has a natural affinity, which may not be obvious on the surface due to his difficulty in social interaction. Upon learning that his and Dana's lives are at risk, Chris decides his self-appointed mission, against his regimen and routine, is to protect Dana at all cost, and figuratively - or literally if the opportunity arises - to put a bullet through the head of whoever has contracted the hit on them. Added to the complication of the situation is that Ray King, the highly successful director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) at the Treasury Department, has assigned his most talented analyst Marybeth Medina to track down the man coined The Accountant who is known to work for crime organizations, the only real lead being The Accountant's photographs - none with a clear face shot - with known crime bosses, and another former alias used, Louis Carroll. King is clear that Medina's career is on the line if she is unsuccessful. While this assignment is outwardly working toward the goals of FinCEN, King has ulterior motives for wanting Medina specifically to track down The Accountant which he does not tell her. — Huggo 2 more All