Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, J.K. Simmons, John Lithgow, Jeffrey Tambor

Gavin O’Connor

What if Jason Bourne wasn’t an amnesiac super-soldier but rather a high-functioning autistic man with comparable fighting skills? That appears to be the general idea behind Gavin O’Connor’s “The Accountant,” a film suffering from such an identity crisis that it’s unclear exactly what kind of movie he’s trying to make. Though it starts out as both a fairly generic crime procedural and a zen-like character study about an on-the-spectrum math genius struggling to lead a normal life, it completely changes gears midway through and transforms into a straight-up action thriller. The problem is that “The Accountant” never stops being those other movies either, resulting in a convoluted and tonally unbalanced mess that is occasionally entertaining but feels like it’s a few drafts away from a finished product.

Small-town accountant Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) isn’t like everybody else. He’s highly intelligent, a proficient marksman and capable of winning a knife fight with only a belt. In fact, Christian isn’t even his real name; it’s just one of many aliases he uses to stay off the grid. Raised by his sadistic military father, who eschewed traditional therapy for an unorthodox childhood designed to prepare him for the toughness of the real world, the antisocial Christian now moonlights as a forensic accountant for dangerous criminal organizations, uncooking the books to locate missing money. Determined to stay one step ahead of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes division, led by director Raymond King (J.K. Simmons), Christian accepts a seemingly innocuous job auditing a high-profile robotics company after an accounting clerk named Dana (Anna Kendrick) discovers a discrepancy in the finances. But as Christian and Dana get closer to exposing the truth, they’re targeted by a contract killer (Jon Bernthal) who’s been hired by someone within the company to contain the leak.

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If you’ve been trying to figure out why Eric Ladin, who plays Jamie Wright on AMC’s “The Killing,” looks familiar to you but can’t quite pin down why, maybe this will help: in addition to being one of the cast members of HBO’s critically acclaimed miniseries “Generation Kill,” he’s also turned up in a few episodes of “Mad Men,” playing Betty Draper’s brother. Now, however, he’s back to playing Darren Richmond’s campaign manager on “The Killing,” which – as you may already be aware – returned to AMC for its second season on Sunday night. Unfortunately, the ratings weren’t necessarily what you’d call stellar, but Ladin’s enthusiasm about what viewers can expect during the course of the series’ sophomore year may prove infectious.

Bullz-Eye: So are you psyched that “The Killing” is finally back?

Eric Ladin: I am. It’s about time! I think everybody is.

BE: Of course, you realize that a lot of people are really just desperate at this point to find out definitively who killed Rosie Larson.

EL: I do realize that, yeah. [Laughs.] I’ve been reminded of that quite a lot over the last nine months.

BE: Were you shocked at the outcry about the lack of resolution in the season finale?

EL: I was, a little bit. I knew that there would definitely be some people that were upset, but I didn’t foresee the hatred and…just the pure venom that was spat towards our writers. [Laughs.] Yeah, I was a little shocked by that.

BE: At least there was a small but somewhat vocal group that was reminded people that we didn’t find out who killed Laura Palmer until the second season of “Twin Peaks.”

EL: That’s correct. And if you ask David Lynch, he’ll probably tell you that the biggest mistake he made was telling people who killed her at all. I think he said – this was in an interview I read – that if he was able to do it again, he’d never tell who the killer was. So, yeah, I don’t believe that there was anywhere that said that you were guaranteed to find the killer in Season 1, but by the same token, I think that AMC’s PR probably could’ve handled it a speck differently. With that said, as a TV viewer, I would not have expected to find the killer in Season 1. So I guess there’s that.

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ALSO: Check out our Season Two preview, as well as interviews with actor Norman Reedus and executive producer Robert Kirkman.

BE: I’ve seen the Season 2 premiere, and from what I can tell, it seems like you guys are still playing at the same level that you were in the first season.

Jon Bernthal: Aw, thanks, man, I appreciate you saying so.

BE: So you guys got to play the love triangle in Season 1, and it’s obviously still ongoing in Season 2. Is it a challenge to play something like that in the middle of a zombie thriller?

JB: I don’t really look at it so much as a love triangle. I look at it more as a family that…these horrible circumstances, this disease that’s turned the world into this apocalyptic state, I look at it more as a family that’s been severely fractured by it. I think that it’s not as simple as two guys in love with the same girl. I think Shane is very much in love with Lori, but I think he loves his best friend, too, as well as their little boy, Carl. I think these are relationships that are immensely important to him, and unfortunately, they’re forever tainted and they’ll never quite be the same. In this world that we’re trying to create, all of these characters have lost so many people. I think what’s very interesting for Shane is that the people in the world who mean the most to him are still alive. It’s just that their relationships will never be the same because of what’s gone down.

BE: Shane is a pretty complex character because of his situation. Do you find it hard to find that balance of personality when you’re playing the part?

JB: No, man, I love it. As an actor, it’s the kind of part you look for. When I first talked with Frank (Darabont) about this, our goal was to not just make him sort of this one-dimensional villain straight out of the comic. We wanted him to be a layered, nuanced character that wasn’t a good guy, wasn’t a bad guy, but was a real guy. I think he’s just operating from a place of being a loyal friend and trying to do what’s best, trying to protect these people that he loves so much. I think he’s always coming from a place of trying to do the right thing, but it’s fractured. It’s just such a different, cold, brutal world now. Also, what’s very interesting about the character is that he’s the first one in the series, I think, to just sort of recognize the lawlessness of this world they’re living in now. He does it when he beats down Ed by the water in Season 1, and also when he trains the gun on Rick in Season 1. I think he recognizes that there are no real circumstances for your actions in this world, and I think Season 2 is very much about Rick and Shane splitting on how they feel the best way to go forward in this world is. I think Shane feels that, to survive, you have to make very brutal, very harsh decisions, and you really have to abandon emotion and morality and just do what’s best for survival, whereas Rick, I think, is kind of plagued by trying to do the right thing. They really become at odds with each other over those philosophies.

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ALSO: Check out our Season Two preview, as well as interviews with actors Jon Bernthal and Norman Reedus.

Bullz-Eye: I know you don’t remember me, but you and I met briefly when you were doing the press roundtables at the New York Comic-Con.

Robert Kirkman: Oh, good! I hope I did okay.

BE: Oh, yeah, you did great. It was a lot of fun. I just got the Season 2 press kit, and I’m 95% of the way through the first episode, so it killed me to have to get on the phone with you.

RK: (Laughs) Awesome!

BE: So how excited are you about the premiere of the show’s second season?

RK: I’m extremely excited. I mean, you know, there’s a lot of pressure to follow up our first season. It was a big success, and, you know, knowing what I know of the second season and seeing what I’ve seen, I’m fairly confident that we’re still going to come out of the gate and impress people, so I’m really anxious to see what people think of it. A lot of hard work has been going into this season, and it’s great that it’s going to finally be enjoyed by some people. So I’m really excited.

BE: When it comes to adapting the original source material, you’ve obviously got an advantage, given that it’s yours… (Laughs) …but I’m sure it’s hard to pick and choose which bits actually make it onto television.

RK: It’s a process. There’s not really a way to nail down exactly what goes into it. But everyone in the room is familiar with the comic, and we all sit down knowing what happened in the book, and we look at where the show’s going and what the characters are doing, and we just kind of figure it all out. Sometimes we take things directly from the comic, and there are a lot of times when we’re talking about things from the comic, and things will go to different characters in the show, or it’ll spin off into something entirely new that wasn’t in the comic, but the starting point was something that did appear in the comic. So it’s an evolving process, and it’s neat to be sitting down to adapt something that I wrote awhile ago. The earlier material in “The Walking Dead” is something I wrote some time ago, so it’s good to be able to revisit that stuff.

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