“The Accountant” (2016)

We may think we have grown as a culture from the fascistic, violent days of the ’70s and ’80s, the era of Dirty Harry and Cobra. However, we need only look at today’s trend of “righteous killer” films to see we have a long way to go. America has always been inspired by the cowboy justice figure. The packaging has changed, but the premise remains: a lone figure who stands above ordinary morality, excused from the boundaries of law, empowered to kill without hesitation because his targets are deemed worthy of death. From Taken to John Wick to The Accountant, these movies still assure us that their violence is cathartic, even noble, because it is aimed at the “right” people.

The Accountant dresses this formula in the respectable garb of a character study. Christian Wolff, the title character played by Ben Affleck, is not a swaggering cop or a vengeful father. He is an autistic savant, traumatized by a brutal upbringing, gifted with a genius for numbers and a cold efficiency in violence. The film grants him layers of sympathy: he is misunderstood, lonely, longing for human connection. Yet his path toward redemption unfolds not in reconciliation or healing, but in assassination and retribution.

Strip away the sympathetic frame, and what remains is the same duel of extremisms we saw in Cobra. Wolff works for criminal organizations as a money launderer, but he also punishes corruption with lethal force. Both the villains and the “hero” operate outside any recognizable legal or moral framework. The villains kill for greed and power; the hero kills for justice… or what feels like justice in the moment. But if the only difference between them is the target of their violence, then we have left the realm of justice and entered the realm of raw power.

The movie hints at deeper possibilities. It suggests that neurodiverse individuals have gifts that a cruel society often fails to value. It shows the scars left by fathers who believe discipline must come through force. It toys with the hope that even someone shaped by violence might still find belonging. But these threads are never fully developed. They are overshadowed by the spectacle of gunfights, executions, and the thrill of watching a man who cannot be stopped.

In the end, The Accountant offers a vision not unlike the fascistic fantasies of the 1980s. It reassures us that when the system is too weak, a solitary figure will bring order through bloodshed. Its moral universe is one where principle matters less than allegiance, where the only true sin is to stand on the wrong side of the hero’s gun. Whether intended or not, the film celebrates the same authoritarian ideal: that justice belongs not to the courts or the law, but to the man who can aim straight and pull the trigger.