Ben Affleck stars as an autistic math savant turned vigilante in Director Gavin O’Connor’s follow-up to 2012’s Warrior and 2015 Jane Got a Gun that is to 2016 what John Wick was to 2015. Full review after the jump.

I was a big fan of Gavin O’Connor’s 2012 film Warrior; a drama based in the world of mixed martial arts that was works primarily as an examination of the rift between two estranged brothers and their distant father. In many ways, The Accountant follows a similar examination of how far the bounds of familial bonds will stretch in extraordinary circumstances. But the main reason that The Accountant works is because of its near-comic book level protagonist and backstory. Ben Affleck plays Christian Wolff, whom we first meet as a severely autistic child. His parents are at their wits end so they take him to a school to try to possibly find a way to cure him. His father is a strict disciplinarian and a military man and Christian finds an interesting life journey that leads him to a life as a records cleaner for questionable people; terrorists, mafiosos and more.

Along the way, Raymond King, the director of financial crimes for the Treasury Department (played by J.K. Simmons) assigns an agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson, probably best known as the Suicide Squad’s Amanda Waller on the CW Arrow show) into helping him identify and arrest the Accountant, as Wolff is nicknamed, prior to his retirement. But as the net on Wolff starts to close in, his latest job; a non-descript accounting of a tech firm founded by Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow) seems to be just as, if not more, dangerous than jobs he’s done for mafia families and the people who hired him are being gunned down one by one. This includes the in-house accountant for Blackburn, Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick), a math nerd for whom Wolff develops a kinship for based on their shared nerdy fascination with math and solving puzzles in accounting.

The film works largely because it plays like a comic book film. As the credits rolled, the world building O’Connor creates here is akin to one where there’s an autistic A-Team with Affleck’s Wolff playing the role of Mr. T’s B.A. Barracus, Hannibal and Face all wrapped in one. Affleck’s Wolff is a cross between Jack Reacher, Agent 47 of the Hitman video game series and Batman rolled into one with a spectrum disorder. Affleck definitely makes the roll work and to his credit it doesn’t seem like a Batman retread. Jon Bernthal also shines playing Wolff’s brother; a fellow gun for hire. Their relationship really makes the film work and ties together the loose ends of Wolff’s origin as played throughout the film. The nerd in me also finds it somewhat hilarious that DC’s current Batman is brothers with Marvel’s Punisher; a familial bond etched in revenge.

The Accountant is one of the most original films this year in the action genre and I definitely look forward to more adventures of Affleck’s Christian Wolff and where his gift for numbers will take him.