Ben Affleck and Anna Kendrick star in this crime thriller about an accountant who makes his money in all the wrong places.
Affleck plays Christian Wolff, a mathematics genius who finds more comfort in his numeracy than he does in other people. Wolff decides to use his talents to make good money acting as an accountant for dangerous criminal organisations. After attracting the attention of the Treasury, he takes on a legitimate robotics client to keep his books clean. However, when a discrepancy involving millions of dollars is discovered, it’s clear that he’s in serious danger, and will need to fight for his life.
To get you in the mood for The Accountant, we’ve listed our three favourite math-based dramas.
Moneyball
Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill star in this biopic about a well-known baseball manager who used clever mathematics to his advantage.
Moneyball tells the story of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, who must assemble a winning team despite a very limited budget. He works with his assistant manager, Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), to employ computer-generated analytics to acquire new players which may have otherwise been overlooked.
The Blu-ray comes loaded with special features, including some exclusive HD content, such as a look at the casting of Moneyball and a documentary about how the book was adapted to film.
21
Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Laurence Fishburne and Kate Bosworth take on the casinos of Vegas in 21.
The film follows a group of students at the prestigious MIT who, along with their eccentric professor, use their maths skills to come up with a clever system that allows them to count cards. The students take their system to Vegas with the hope of winning big to pay off their tuition fees. However, after being seduced by the glamour of Sin City, the group soon realises that it’s more dangerous than they ever imagined.
The film comes with a royal flush of extras, including a making-of documentary, audio commentary, and an intriguing look into the history of blackjack and card counting.
The Imitation Game
Benedict Cumberbatch takes the lead in this film about arguably one of the most important developments of World War II: the cracking of the Enigma code.
Keira Knightley, Rory Kinnear and Matthew Goode also star in this biopic about Alan Turing, a Cambridge mathematics alumnus who’s recruited by the British government to attempt to crack the Nazi codes. This includes Enigma, which cryptologists had previously deemed unbreakable. Turing’s team sets to work on building a machine which can crack the codes, but first they must do battle with the internal politics of the government and its army.
The Blu-ray comes with some cracking extras including commentary by director Morten Tyldum, deleted scenes, a Q&A and a making-of documentary.
