Video review: "The Way Back"

You’ve probably heard that “The Way Back” is a sports movie, but that’s not really the best description. Certainly basketball is at the heart of the story, but that’s not what it’s about.

The meat of it is a tale of redemption, in which Ben Affleck plays a miserable drunk at the end of his string asked to return to the Catholic high school where he was a legend a quarter-century ago and take over as coach of the misfit team.

We’ve seen this sort of sports movie before: at first, the team is miserable and clash with their new coach. But they gradually start to put their doubts and acrimony aside, and start winning games. This all leads to the Big Game at the end.

It’s a story arc that’s been around forever, perfected by “Hoosiers,” replayed countless times since.

But as I say, Affleck, director Gavin O’Connor (“Miracle”) and screenwriter Brad Ingelsby really do focus on the coach, Jack Cunningham, more than the team. Jack works a mind-numbing construction job during the day and drinks himself into a stupor at the same crappy bar every night.

He’s still the same guy after taking up the coaching job, but it leaves less time for drinking, so he drinks less, and finds he’s a little better. He’s able to open up a little more with his sister and his ex-wife, and face the tragedy that weighs so hard on his life.

Even the “back” that he gets to probably isn’t going to be what you think it is.

There is plenty of basketball action and we do focus for a little while on one or two of the kids. Brandon (Brandon Wilson) is the quiet point guard who needs to step up and be more vocal. Chubbs (Charles Lott Jr.) is the heart of the team who cracks them up with his antics. Marcus (Melvin Gregg) is the most talented player but also a major head case.

This is one of Affleck’s best performances. There’s no young man’s pride here: he’s playing a middle-aged guy without much to show for his life sliding down a dark path. We see his self-hate, but also the drowned proud that lies underneath all that blackness, waiting for a chance to rise again toward the light.

Plus, the sports action is quite good.

Bonus features are a mite slim. There are only two making-of documentary shorts: “The Way Back: This Sporting Life” and “Every Loss Is Another Fight: The Road to Redemption.”

Movie:

Extras:

Video review: "The Accountant"

“The Accountant” is an entertaining film, but it could have been much more. It’s about a math whiz who has autism and has turned into some sort of “super spy CPA” type who cooks the books and then kills the bad guys. My best take on it is that star Ben Affleck was jealous of his buddy Matt Damon’s two most pivotal roles, Jason Bourne and Will Hunting, and decided to combine them into one movie.

The result is part character study, part romance, and a lot spy action that gradually devolves into more or a less comedy, with our hero offing villains and then tossing off quips. It doesn’t really all fit together, but there are some nice pieces to the equation.

Christian Wolff was a kid whose genius and social disability were both plain to see. Raised by a stern military dad and beset with tragedy, he’s turned into this mystery figure who runs a one-man accounting shop in a crummy strip mall, doing taxes for working class folks. On the side, though, he runs the numbers for all sorts of international bad guys, from the mafia to drug cartels.

On the hunt is Treasury agent Ray King (J.K. Simmons), who wants to bust the legendary shadow man before he’s forced to hang up his badge in a few months. Jeffrey Tambor plays another father figure, who schooled Christian on accounting while they were in prison together.

Providing the cute-n-spunky ingredient is Anna Kendrick as Dana, a junior accountant at a company that makes robotic limbs. She thinks she’s uncovered some malfeasance the CEO (John Lithgow) doesn’t know about, so Christian is brought in to work his magic. Soon the young CPAs are auditing each other’s bedsheets.

From there, things get weirder and weirder, with black ops types showing up (Jon Bernthal among them) to make dark threats and stage the deaths of minor characters. Director Gavin O’Connor and screenwriter Bill Dubuque let things slide further and further afield from the somber first half, until the movie virtually becomes a laugh riot -- sometimes intentional, sometimes not.

“The Accountant” isn’t a bad movie, it just forgets itself. In trying too hard to be both Jason and Will, Christian wanders into absurdity. It’s an entertaining train wreck, but still a mess.

Bonus features are so-so, and are limited to three making-of documentary shorts: “Inside the Man,” “Behavior Science” and “The Accountant in Action.”

Movie:



 Extras:

Review: "The Accountant"

 There’s a lot of things to like about “The Accountant,” but tonally the film is a sloppy, gloppy mess.

It starts out as a serious character examination of a high-functioning autistic man played by Ben Affleck who works as an accountant for some very bad people -- terrorists, drug cartels, repressive regimes, etc. Then he quickly morphs into a Jason Bourne-like character who can bullseye people a mile away and chop-socky them to death up close.

It begins on a very somber note, and by the end has more or less turned into a full-out action/comedy. Somewhere in here is a romance that gets dropped down a well, and a redemptive tale of a shiftless bureaucrat who found his calling late in life.

Director Gavin O’Connor (“Warrior”) and script man Bill Dubuque gather an interesting cast of characters and story elements, but can’t assemble them into a coherent piece. Still, if you look at it purely as popcorn entertainment, there’s a lot of assets in the ledger.

The story opens with Christian Wolff as a kid (played by Seth Lee), prone to fits and cut off from the rest of the world. But he’s got brilliance beneath the behavior, as evidenced by his ability to put together a huge puzzle in minutes -- with the picture facing upside down -- while waiting to talk to a therapist. His father (Robert C. Treveiler) is a stern Army man, and gives him a brutal upbringing of tough love and combat training so he can survive.

“You’re different. Sooner or later, different scares people,” Dad instructs.

Now in his late 30s or so, Christian is a CPA with a dingy one-man practice, ZZZ Accounting, south of Chicago. Affleck does a wonderful bit of technical acting, showing us all of his quirks and obsessions. He blows on his fingers before starting a new task, and becomes distracted to the point of conniption if interrupted before he’s finished.

He does tax returns and such for farmers and the small storefronts around his in the strip mall. But on the side he takes high-dollar gigs from disreputable types, finding out who’s been skimming in operations like the drug lords who, as one law enforcement type puts it, “count their money by weighing semis full of cash.”

That LEO is Ray King (J.K. Simmons), a legendary Treasury agent with lots of huge busts to his name. He’s got a few months until forced retirement, and is determined to spend that time tracking down this ghost accountant. He recruits a young analyst with a troublesome past (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) as his paladin. She learns about a troubled young man who was in and out of institutions, including a federal prison stint where he learned at the knee of an elderly mafia numbers man (Jeffrey Tambor).

Now Christian has been recruited to check out a prominent firm that makes robotic limbs for amputees, led by a visionary leader (John Lithgow) who’s not so good with numbers. There Christian meets Dana, an adorably dorky company accountant who first found the discrepancy. They negotiate a delicate little dance, with her trying to figure out this puzzle of a man and him trying to break through decades of imposed discipline.

(Beautiful, smart and vibrant women are often attracted to awkward, socially clumsy men in the movies – which, completely coincidentally, tend to be written by awkward, socially clumsy men.)

Things go bad when a team of assassins (led by Jon Bernthal) come after Dana and Christian. He quickly makes short work of them, and the pair are in the wind.

Things are more or less fine to this point, but then the film keeps tipping over into unexpectedly funny moments that break the mood. Some are obviously intentional, such as Affleck’s affectless responses to Kendrick’s emotional outbursts. But the compounding effect is to undermine the tense atmosphere the movie has worked so hard for.

The plotting is rather obvious -- if you can’t figure out who’s the person pushing all the buttons, or the nature of the third act’s “big surprise” a long way off, you haven’t been paying much attention.

If “The Accountant” had just presented itself as a straightforward action/drama -- “Superspy CPA” -- then we could just sit back and enjoy it for its own sake. By seeking higher ground, and then settling for cheaper thrills, it’s only marginally worth an investment.