In The Accountant, deductions pile up quickly–
1) Absurd premise: Take an autistic math wiz, Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), who’s afraid of human contact, load him with savant math skills, and throw in prodigious military and martial arts skills. Deduct for brazen silliness.
2) Go through the motions of demonstrating compassion concerning autism while actually exploiting it with a mean father who puts the child Christian on a harsh regimen of self-defense in order to counter bullying. More lost points for hypocrisy.
3) Introduce an interesting supporting character (J. K. Simmons) as a bossy federal investigator and then have his character basically dilly dally his way to a dead end subplot. Deduct for misuse of an Oscar-winning talent.
4) Bring in Anna Kendrick as an underwritten love interest who’s anything but a love interest. Another setback for misuse of a major talent.
5) On the villain front, saddle a compellingly dangerous Jon Bernthal and and a stereotypically shrill John Lithgow with howler plot twists. A major deduction for disrespecting the audience’s intelligence.
6) Have Ben Affleck look as blank as possible when going through his Rain Man persona, and just a bit more animated when he’s breaking someone’s neck. Affleck seems to be waiting for his brother Casey’s forthcoming masterpiece Manchester By By The Sea as much as we viewers. A final deduction of credit for a lack of showing much in the way of a character’s depth while harboring under the excuse that his condition prevents it.