yes you are correct, i mean Collateral, a film i did not like. I like some Cruise films, some not so much. Loved Jack Reacher and Edge Of Tomorrow (the ending was crap ok get over it), and i think Last Samurai is one of the best films of the last 10 years.
I did not like Collateral because:
his character is supposedly an EXTREMELY evil person; the script, in his interactions with the cab driver, implies that he does not care at all for people (and would most likely have killed the driver too, despite his promise that he wouldn't). But tom cruise is still baby face tom and he simply cannot pull off any other role than Mr Smiles, he is simply not convincing.
And that is the entire film; his character, how malicious he is, is the whole plot. "Some poor cab driver dude has to drive around the worst maniac ever" is the entirety of the plot.
In The Accountant, Damo... i mean, Affleck's character is just NOT MAD ENOUGH.
Give me a character as psycho as A Beautiful Mind and maybe we can make a film out of it.
The reason being, the character building we go through - which is a solid 40% of the film, in one of the longest introductions ever - does not come into play in the rest of the film, if not for the final confrontation.
Essentially the plot is "this guy gets mad and goes to a house to kill people, some family/romantic interest involved", the same plot as Commando, if you will. The fact that he's autistic is only used in the premise, where he discovers that there's some accounting bad stuff going on, when we finally get the Motive(tm) that our Protagonist(tm) has to do what he does.
And thats not all.
The scenes with Anna do not reflect what we saw earlier, which instead reflects the scene where he says "i need to finish" when he is being fired.(trying to keep it as vague as possible here)
He either is, or isn't, a high functioning autistic.
The director used this complex character just to motivate an attack on a house. Why do i have to sit through an hour of backstory just for that, hasn't he ever seen an action film before?
If you really want to save this script, forget the Anna character - she is only useful until her "he's a murderer" scene. This clearly sets the tone of the film (which is sadly vague until then) to "this guy can math and he can kick ass, but he can't love", get a different actress to play her, reshoot the entire film to make it focus more on the fact that he's crazy. Shorten the backstory (to highlight the uncompromising father), play the house attack on a loop and beat the director in the face with an iron bar every time John Lithgow screams and is then immediately followed by a mute scene, and center the film on JK Simmons' observations of Affleck's character.
I urge you to watch some spy films such as Three Days Of Condor; they focus on how the people FEEL. And Accountant is just a spy/action film dressed up to look like it has some meaning, but it doesn't.
this is me watching the film:
ok, so, he's good at math, i guess the film will be about math.
nope, not.
ok, he likes to shoot.
uh, there's a few minutes of math.
he's a spy.
he's attacking the house. thats what you get when you mess with mom n pops.
i guess the film is over now?
didn't anna just hate this guy and wanted him dead, but now she loves him?
spoiler: having asperger's doesn't make you good with snipers; having a full time job as a private mercenary who lives and dies by the sniper, in hire of a corporation who can afford to return 60 million dollars, makes you good with snipers.
i could go on.