THE ACCOUNTANT doesn’t just break the rules, it/he shoots them to pieces. Generally, movies revolving around someone with a physical, mental or social disability, condition or status have the fortune slighted individual or group triumph in some fashion—a bobsled race, a spelling bee, a championship game—that not only lets them shine but allows the audience to feel better about themselves. A pat on the back for empathy, a two-hour reward for caring (two hours plus part of the drive home) about the ‘blind fighter pilot/landscaper who married the supermodel lottery winner during the Christmas flood disaster’. In this unaccountably viscerally satisfying 2016 entry the upside to autism is that—like race, gender, age, mating choices or the malady of the month—with a little extra effort, it can be turned into an outlet for creative cathartic violence, math gone militant in a one-person army whose body counting makes a killing at the box office. No doubt the last motive behind the humanitarian brainstorming was profit. Cue the 2025 sequel.

“My husband’s in the Army, which means we all are.”

Their mother unable to cope, two boys, one with severe autism, are left to the un-tender mercies of their pitiless PsyOps father who oversees their forced training in martial arts and assorted mayhem machinery. Grown, the autistic ‘Christian Wolff’ (Ben Affleck) uses his math savant genius to ‘fix’ fraud for business clients and his re-Bourne death dealing skills to clean balance sheets. His ‘normal’ brother, ‘Brax’ (Jon Bernthal) also works the dark end of the street, leading a hit man team whose mission crisscrosses with Christian’s need to ‘finish’ his current assignment. Trying to track the linked threads of financial and casualty carnage are Treasury director ‘Ray King’ (J.K. Simmons), a veteran cynic, and prove-herself newcomer agent ‘Marybeth Medina’ (Cynthia Addai-Robinson). The joker in the deck is brainy and lonely analyst ‘Dana Cummings’ (Anna Kendrick) who assists Christian on a project and tries to break thru or at least into his shells, one natural, one cultivated. In the meantime, bodies stack up like bills.

“Cummings… you’re needed in… whatever area I’m paying you to be needed in.”

Directed by Gavin O’Connor (Miracle, Warrior), written by Bill Dubuque, the sleekly shot and performed actioner doesn’t need to make more sense than is absolutely necessary for plot purposes, and it only takes one minute after John Lithgow shows up to place a sure bet on which way his character will arc. Q: if your brother was Jon Bernthal, would you feel somehow comforted? It’s a fit role for the die-hard Affleck, smartly keeping any temptation to employ behavior tics for sympathy and crunching cucumber-cool in the ace sniper & man-to-man combat jazz. Kendrick, as usual, brightens every scene she’s in. Playing the boys, Seth Lee (Christian) and Jake Presley (Brax) are excellent; both young actors are expert martial artists. A guilty pleasure movie, well crafted and more entertaining than its outline would suggest.

Budget: $44,000,000. Gross: $86,300,000 in North America (37th in ’16), $68,900,000 more earned abroad. Complaints from some quarters about using something serious like autism as a venue for a cast-decimating thriller bounced off the power of the purse, and after a few justification mumbles the plans for at least one sequel began brewing. Would people affected by autism have a problem with this movie? Sure, maybe 1 out of 1,000.

128 minutes, with Jeffrey Tambor, Rob Treveiler (father from Hell), Jean Smart, Andy Umberger, Alison Wright, and Mark Kraft. Good, tense score from Mark Isham.