The Accountant 2 is a mishmash of tone that has surplus of entertaining laughs but a deficit of consistency and genre coherence. The action thriller is a direct sequel to 2016's The Accountant, in which Ben Affleck's Christian Wolff must team up with his brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) to help treasury Agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) solve the murder of someone close to her. While Bernthal and Affleck's infectious chemistry inspires loveable and cheeky banter in every shared moment, the film struggles to form a cohesive whole, featuring enough convoluted side-plots that warrant an audit on returning screenplay writer Bill Dubuque.
The first Accountant film did little to gain much credit on the balance sheet. Although a box office success, it struggled to be more than a rote thriller—feeling too inconsequential to garner harsh criticism and too generic to award any solid praise. Its depiction of neurodivergence was often misguided at best and cartoonish (and sometimes dangerously ill-informed) at worst.
Ben Affleck's trigger-happy, autistic martial artist turned accountant provided a novel and engaging leading man in a narrative that often felt misguided. Creating a film about an autistic superhero who happens to spend his days as a forensic accountant for criminal organisations, awkward flirting with Anna Kendrick's Dana Cummings wasn't enough to undercut the self-serious tone that dampened the whole affair. The sequel, directed once again by Gavin O'Connor, lacks Kendrick but gains a sense of humour, thus making The Accountant 2 a more successful film than its predecessor, but only when it focuses on being a buddy comedy between the two brothers.
The film opens with returning character Raymond King (J.K. Simmons), the director of FinCEN's treasury department, meeting with the elusive blonde assassin Anaïs (Daniella Pineda). The rendezvous is cut short when unknown assailants attack the bar they're meeting in, but not before the discovery and exchange of a mysterious photograph which returning treasury Agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) must make sense of in King's now widening puzzle after tragedy strikes.
Nine years after the first film, Chris is living in an Idaho trailer park and laying low. He still has his routines such as daily food preferences. The pencak silat-trained mathematician is now looking for love: a hilarious early sequence has him crunch the numbers on what he thinks is a successful algorithm for a speed dating event that is more lady-pulling in theory than in practice.
His handler and nonverbal friend Justine (voiced by Alison Wright and played by Allison Robertson) still manages his everyday requests and this time is bolstered by a team of neurodivergent children at the Harbor Neuroscience Academy. One might almost expect Professor X to wheel himself into the frame at one point. A highlight features a sequence where Chris calls upon the young autist's techno-whiz surveillance prowess to get facial recognition during a process that would have Orwell shuddering from the grave.
Chris’ domestic foibles are interrupted when Agent Medina contacts him after reading the message 'Find the Accountant' scribbled on a dead contact's arm. Cue some other dead bodies, a tie to a mysterious El Salvadoran family, a conspiracy surrounding undocumented immigrants, a prompt reunion between brothers, and it's not long before a geared-up road trip ensues.
Amongst the country-hopping scheming, the film finds its strength in unpacking the rift between two brothers with diametrically opposing personalities. Christian never reached out to his brother as promised in the near-decade length after the first film's climax. Braxton has held that resentment the entire time as a hitman, expertly killing his targets but feeling hollow and increasingly disconnected during every job.
Jon Bernthal's performance as Brax effectively conveys the hardened soldier who yearns for familial connection on the inside, igniting a chemistry that effortlessly plays against Christian’s idiosyncratic ways, which makes for a humorous crossroads with Brax's unbridled brawn. Watching the soft-spoken savant bicker with the insecure hitman is a lot of fun when Affleck and Bernthal share the screen, and sometimes a beer.
Ben Affleck gives Chris a lot more colour and playfulness in this rendition of the character, mainly thanks to the more light-hearted nature of the buddy comedy/road trip. Bill Dubuque once again trivialises/misrepresents what it means to be autistic in his screenplay, often resorting to stereotypes and over-emphasised difference. Still, Affleck provides more humanity in his sophomore high-functioning autist outing. An affecting scene has Chris watch the rhythm and patterns of a country bar dance; allowing him to thrivingly jive with a local and his brother as he celebrates his different way of expressing himself.
The main issues of the film lie in its pace and tone. Medina's confusing rabbit hole of never-ending threads to missing bodies, unnamed assassins, migrant children, and human traffickers, renders the moments of levity incongruous. It is a strange conundrum, considering the film's comedy (being its virtue) goes against the entire tone of the previous film. There is also a barely appearing antagonist prompting how the sequel fits with the first film and if it understands its tonality and style.
The Accountant 2 has elements that improve upon its initial offering, but the overall ledger still needs further balancing. It struggles as an action movie, featuring action-lite set pieces until a tacked-on third-act climax. As a thriller, the themes of exploitation and migrant child trafficking feel underbaked – pure fodder to prop up Chris and Brax as saviours. As a comedy and a brotherly romp, it's a total blast, almost making up for the rest of the film's mishaps.
If the still in planning stage The Accountant 3 realises that the less serious the franchise gets, the better it becomes; Ben Affleck's 'autistic hero' might just become the fun and entertaining action maverick we need.
Director: Gavin O'Connor
Cast: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson
Writer: Bill Dubuque
Producers: Ben Affleck, Mark Williams, Lynette Howell Taylor
Composer: Bryce Dessner
Cinematography: Seamus McGarvey
Editor: Richard Pearson
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