The twist in The Accountant is that Affleck’s hero Christian Wolff is also qualified to sort out your taxes, like Jack Reacher with a master’s degree in bookkeeping. All of this partly explains why Wolff leads a double life as an adult, crunching numbers by day and offing mobsters on the side; the story’s flashpoint comes when he’s asked to sort out the accounts at a tech company owned by Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow). Wolff’s digging around in the company’s finances soon gets him and another accountant, the sweet-natured Dana (Anna Kendrick) in trouble with a gang of mercenaries led by a dapper Jon Bernthal, while a government agent played by JK Simmons is also on Wolff’s trail. Aside from collecting paintings and geek memorabilia (he has a mint issue of Action Comics issue one in a drawer), Wolff’s other passion is to go out in the middle of nowhere and shoot honeydew melons with the kind of ordnance a soldier might use to sink a battleship. It’s a symbol of the film’s bizarre mix of low-key characterisation and violent overkill: if you thought Antoine Fuqua’s remake of The Equalizer was weird, with its ex-military hero working at a DIY store and attacking people with power tools, wait until you see The Accountant. This is a film which attempts to square a fairly detailed study of Wolff’s inner life – his private anxieties, his obsession with completing intricate tasks, his assorted childhood traumas – with a plot that moves ever deeper into preposterous and contrived territory. If only The Accountant were as taut and controlled as its production values and its protagonist. Wolff, who’s a sympathetic chap in the movie’s first act, seems borderline psychotic by the last; and by this point, the way the story plays out has even the supporting characters wondering aloud what the heck is going on. Affleck, Simmons, Benthal and an underused Kendrick are all on point; sadly, The Accountant proves to be an action thriller that ends not so much with a bang, but a groan. The Accountant is out in UK cinemas on the 4th October.