Nearly a decade after Ben Affleck introduced the world to Christian Wolff in 2016’s “The Accountant,” a sequel is born. Gavin O’Connor’s “The Accountant 2” continues a trend of long-awaited sequels picking at the carcasses of existing properties for any possible franchise potential.
Bill Dubuque’s screenplay is a trope-regurgitating mess — unremarkable, jump-around nonsense — but somehow stumbles into an entertaining brand of B-grade action silliness. The tone evolves from deadly serious to deadly kinda-sorta serious, alleviating a few of the original’s pain points. Don’t expect anything groundbreaking, just an entertaining take on neurodivergent mercenaries and brotherly love.
Affleck reprises his role as autistic badass Christian Wolff, aka “The Accountant,” whose books aren’t exactly clean. Treasury Agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) reluctantly contacts Christian after someone close to both takes a fatal bullet. They join forces with a shared taste for justice, but deciphering the tangled web of available clues requires help. Christian phones his hitman brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) for a family reunion in Los Angeles, where the trio starts rattling underworld cages. Broken limbs, dead bodies, and whizzing bullets aren’t typical hazards of an accountant’s profession, but Christian’s no ordinary accountant.
“The Accountant 2” can feel like 17 storylines are tangled into a yarn ball. Christian’s called into action because of one untimely death, but his investigation is all over the place. American syndicates, Mexican affiliates, pimps, traffickers, launderers, and countless other baddie stereotypes fade in and out of relevance without much definition.
You’ll find tighter continuity in a straight-to-video Steven Seagal actioner, like Dubuque threw darts at ideas and used a Mad Libs approach to fill in his story’s blanks. Daniella Pineda’s rival killer Anaïs gets lost in the shuffle as the distractions mount, a commentary on the plot’s overall incapabilities—never her prevailing talents. It’s a needlessly convoluted blueprint due to the script’s overstuffed nature, antithetical to Christian’s touted ability to solve any problem.
What saves The Accountant 2 is a prominent sense of humor. Christian’s not just dislocating Thug #5’s shoulder as an interrogation tactic. He’s trying his luck at dating seminars and line-dancing at Los Angeles honky-tonk bars. Braxton’s eating ice cream with his victim’s new widow, or giving himself a cuss-filled pep talk in his undies before phoning his intimidating ex-lover. Bernthal and Affleck share beers, push buttons and liberate guarded encampments as brotherly mercenaries who are fine apart — although Bernthal does no wrong all film — but captivatingly hilarious together. There’s a buddy comedy vibe that sustains when no one’s dying, which is lucky because action sequences are front and back-loaded.
Where “The Accountant” handles conversations around autism with less deftness, “The Accountant 2” is about commonality. Including autistic actors helps, like Allison Robertson, who makes her accomplished feature debut as Christian’s Harbor Neuroscience “Girl in the Chair” Justine. There’s an entire subplot about “Acquired Savant Syndrome” that points at neurodivergence as a superpower (dittoed theming from “The Accountant”), while Harbor’s forensic training program for autistic children lets these kids work as Christian’s sidekicks (preventing horrible things from happening).
Even Braxton’s usage of the word “weird” about Christian is to teach a compassionate lesson, but Bernthal’s bruiser is hardly unsympathetic. O’Connor makes sure to include dicier dialogue between bros as Christian explains that his brain isn’t wired to think like Braxton, where the latter doesn’t shame, but digests and supports.
I wish the same attention were paid to action set-pieces, which aren’t as consistent. It’s a shame because the explosive third act concludes with Christian and Braxton going all “Army of Two” against hopeless grunts. My praise of comedic elements doesn’t erase the dry stretches without gunfire or cracked skulls, which is frustrating because what does exist is quite exciting.
Christian and Braxton are stone-cold killers with ammo-swapping chemistry as battlefield partners, but there’s a strange lack of examples considering the film’s two-hour duration. It’s odd how situational punchlines reveal a pile of dead bodies without showing us, for example, the ways Braxton dispatched multiple penthouse guards. In a film begging for double the action sequences, why fast-forward past existing ones?
Nevertheless, “The Accountant 2” surpasses its original by keying into a lenient and dangerously playful tone. Affleck is charming and vulnerable as Christian in moments where he’s just living everyday life, trying to navigate the anxious minefield of dating or friendships through his exceptional perspective. It’s not the sequel you’d expect, which is a compliment. Bernthal’s the unexpected MVP despite Affleck’s leading role, but the real treat is how “The Accountant 2” becomes a wholesome and heart-pumping family affair. O’Connor can make 10 more of these flicks as long as Christian and Braxton take on hordes of villains side-by-side.
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