[Note: There are spoilers below. This is a film that has been out awhile, but caveat lector all the same.]

In The Accountant, a film from 2016 that I just got around to seeing on my flight from LAX to Taipei for the first time, we have a stellar film about a neurodivergent and morally complicated accountant which I am adding to my short list of films to see again whenever I see them listed, a list that includes Pride & Prejudice and Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist and very few other offerings, which is no little sign of approval. The fellow I was sitting next to on my flight had seen the film about ten times and I can easily understand why, as this tightly plotted and well-written and well-directed film from director Gavin O’Connor (for whom this is his most recent directing credit, shockingly) and writer Bill Dubuque (who also has a surprisingly light list of credits) is a credit to its cast and crew and contains some amazing performances by such actors as Ben Affleck (who plays the titular role), Anna Kendrick (Dana Cummings, a young accountant caught up in a deadly high-stakes fraud crisis in her company), J.K. Simmons (crusty and corrupt retiring Treasury Agent), Jon Berthal (dangerous figure in his own right, and someone with a surprisingly close connection to the titular accountant), Jeffrey Tambor (black accounting expert for the Gambino mob abandoned by his own), Cynthia Addai-Robinson (corrupt young Treasury agent in training), John Lithgow and Jean Smart (husband and wife team of supposedly idealistic robotics creators), and Allyson Wright (Justine, a seemingly incommunicative mentally disabled woman who hides some secrets of her own).

When one is faced by a film this good, it is worth pondering what makes this film so good. Part of it is in the plot, a surprisingly taut and complex plot, full of sighs, grunts, and verbal expressions of doubt and contempt that revolve around a solitary accountant who is a poster child for Asperger’s syndrome, with his inability to hold eye contact well, his simultaneous longing for and estrangement from personal contact and intimacy, his combination of living a simple and somewhat austere life with an appreciation for high art and a life of intrigue and danger, and a moral code that is strikingly consistent but also divergent with societal norms. This is a film that contains four parallel plot lines that intersect into one, a film that is begging for (and that will apparently receive, we hope) a sequel, with an accountant dealing with the need to lay low after some dangerous business, a brother seeking to reconnect with another and confront him about their father’s death some ten years ago or so, a young accountant who finds herself in harm’s way after discovering irregularities in her company’s accounting statements, and a retiring treasury agent who needs to find a replacement and finds one by blackmailing someone with their own checkered history they want to keep hidden, thus underscoring the moral ambiguity of the film as a whole. Who are the good guys here, the viewer as urged to ask in the face of a morally ambiguous protagonist whose dogged determination to live according to his own moral code while coping with the bends and twists of his own mind is striking.

The way that the film blends incidents from the present-day while also feeding in flashbacks–mostly through the sufferings of its protagonist–allows for the exploration of some surprisingly deep material in what could have been a competent but ordinary action film. Christian Wolff associates through a British-voiced woman who gives him advice and criticism and a great deal of help, launders money through businesses but does not seem to live a life poisoned by excessive greed and instead seeks a life where he can live through ordinary patterns while also being able to leave quickly when necessary. He is willing to do business with evildoers but is dogged in ensuring that the books are clean and he is willing to increase the body count when protecting people he cares about against those who would seek their harm. He seeks to combine providing care and encouragement for other people like whom who are neurodivergent while also showing a tough-mindedness that requires being able to overcome the hatred and fear of others through being able to defend themselves with violence if necessary. By and large, this is a moral code I can live with, even if it is clearly at odds with contemporary society, which forms part of the tragic undercurrent of this film. Those who wish to defend society must have a perspective that differs from that of the society around them, and that puts them at odds with their society’s mistrust of those who are different but who need the excellence that these outsiders provide even if such people, because of their difference, never truly belong. This is a film whose capturing of the essential complexity of my own life and that of many other people is striking and worthy of praise. I cannot praise it enough, so I must simply resolve myself to enjoying it as much as I can, and encouraging others to see it as both entertainment as well as food for thought and reflection about the nature of the neurodivergent, about the nature of excellence and difference, the essential mediocrity of normal society, and the moral ambiguity of fatherhood and authority in general, to say nothing about the legitimacy of business and government, all of which are important themes in a vitally important film.