‘The Accountant’ plays by its own rules

Those going into "The Accountant" expecting a straightforward action film are going to be disappointed. Those going into "The Accountant" looking for a serious-minded thriller are going to be disappointed. Those going into the film looking for a substantive, sensitive approach to the minds of those who fall on the autistic spectrum are all going to be disappointed.

But those looking for a film in which Ben Affleck can play a mild-mannered, socially stunted accounting genius who moonlights as an assassin with ninja skills, sniper accuracy and access that would make 007 jealous should be prepared to be overjoyed.

Despite its rather modern, real-life setup, "The Accountant" never really sets foot into what we could define "reality" and it doesn't really care, as it spins faster and faster toward its wonderfully loopy conclusion that completely works despite itself.

Affleck plays Chris Wolff, who we learn through periodic flashbacks may not have the strongest social skills, but possesses an iron-strong moral compass and combat training usually reserved for those found on the pages of comic books. He is an ace accountant, using as a small-town, strip-mall firm as a front, where he is able to assist decent folk in finding the tiniest of items to help them during tax time.

But Wolff also lends his services out to some of the most notorious people in the world, offering to help clean their books only to infiltrate them later - trading his calculator for a Colt pistol - and clean house. When a treasury agent (played by J.K. Simmons) is wise to Wolff's ways, he sends a lower-level staffer (played by Cynthia Addai-Robinson) to snoop around our shadowy tax man.

Meanwhile, Wolff has agreed to help a robotics company that wants to go public but is hemorrhaging money from an internal leak. It was discovered by Dana (played by Anna Kendricks) a young whistleblower who also happens to be a socially awkward numbers whiz, and all sorts of adorable. This all sounds rather straightforward, and in some respects, "The Accountant" looks as though it will walk a linear path, but between its unconventional approach to its tale (not much really happens, action-wise, for at least the first hour), and its so-dumb-it's-brilliant plot twists in the third act, the film seems to play by its own rules and is the better for it. As long as you are willing to hitch onto its wagon, it will certainly provide you an exciting ride.

It helps that its cast is not only strong, but committed to the lunacy. Joining Simmons and Kendricks is John Lithgow as the head of the robotics company, Jeffrey Tambor as a mob accountant, and Jon Bernthal as a charismatic fellow assassin who seems to always be circling in Wolff's universe. But it is Affleck who deserves much credit for keeping us engaged here.

Despite attempts to craft the actor into a franchise action star (Jack Ryan in "The Sum of All Fears," "Daredevil,"), "The Accountant" feels like the closest fit to his strengths (and limitations) and legitimately works as an "origin story," much the same way his buddy Matt Damon was able to make an amnesiac rogue CIA agent a multi-film star with the Bourne series. Affleck is deadpan when needed, but capable of moments of humor and sadness, and is in bulked-up Batman shape that helps us buy into the fact that he crunches bones as well as numbers.

And if we can buy into cinematic worlds in which heroes are created by mutant spiders, transported from alternate galaxies, or time-warped to present day from the 1940s, there's certainly no reason we can't embrace the fact that our local H&R Block button-pusher couldn't take down an evil regime in his/her spare time. There's a boldness to the film's insanity which actually leave me hungry for "Accountant 2: Tax Season."