I finally watched The Accountant on Prime Video and was surprised to find some of my favorite actors in the supporting cast

I didn't see The Accountant when it first came out in 2016; I wasn’t writing professionally about movies at the time, and its "meh" take from critics didn’t stir me to check it out on my own. But plenty of people did end up going to see the Ben Affleck movie, making it a solid performer at the box office and — while it may have taken a bit — spawning a sequel, The Accountant 2, which comes out on April 25.

I will be writing a review for The Accountant 2 (so keep an eye out for that later this week), so in preparation, I watched The Accountant, currently streaming on Prime Video. My immediate takeaway was surprise that two of my favorite actors from recent years starred in the action movie, and I didn’t have a clue — John Lithgow and Jean Smart.

Even having not seen The Accountant, I knew that starring alongside Affleck were Hollywood stalwarts Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons, and Jon Bernthal, but Lithgow and Smart’s presence in the movie was completely unknown to me, so I was caught off guard momentarily when they popped up.

In case you need a quick refresher, The Accountant stars Affleck as Christian Wolff, a man on the autism spectrum who has developed an odd combination of skills. He is a prolific contract accountant, able to find things in the numbers that basically no one else can, but also has military combat skills. Those dual abilities have made him the go-to accountant for some of the world’s most dangerous criminals. But despite operating in that grey area, he has a moral compass he adheres to.

The plot of the movie revolves around his latest accounting job, where he is trying to identify some accounting errors for a robotics/tech company. That’s where Lithgow and Smart come in, as they play Lamar and Rita Blackburn, brother and sister that head up the company.

Because of recent and upcoming high-profile projects, it’s weird to watch The Accountant now and think how Lithgow and Smart weren’t featured more in the movie’s marketing, even though their roles aren’t the biggest. But times were a bit different in 2016.

Lithgow was already an Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning actor, but it had been years since his most notable projects like 3rd Rock from the Sun and Dexter, and The Accountant came out about a month before his next Emmy-winning portrayal, Netflix’s The Crown. Of course, in the last few years, we’ve seen Lithgow give excellent performances in not just The Crown but The Old Man and Conclave, while he has also been tapped to play Dumbledore in the new Harry Potter TV series.

Smart, meanwhile, was coming off an Emmy nomination for Fargo season 2 when she starred in The Accountant, but undoubtedly she’s only grown in popularity since then, thanks primarily to her Emmy-winning role in Hacks (season 4 now streaming). She also had high-profile roles on Watchmen, Mare of Easttown and Babylon that have boosted awareness among viewers of all ages of how great of an actress she is.

As for my overall thoughts on the movie — it’s an entertaining enough action/thriller; perfectly serviceable but nothing revolutionary. However, I can see how now that we know these characters and their history, that could open things up and give the sequel some new things to play around with. My biggest complaint with The Accountant is that we don’t get more of Lithgow and Smart.

We’ll find out when The Accountant 2 opens exclusively in movie theaters on April 25. In the meantime, you can stream The Accountant on Prime Video in both the US and UK.