The Accountant 2, directed by Gavin O’Connor, is in cinemas now.
When it came out in 2016, The Accountant felt like a one-off, fun, silly action movie, with Ben Affleck playing a deadly earnest finance guy with autistic traits, making his money accounting for mobsters, and emotionlessly killing anyone who got in his way.
But its unexpected box office success has given us The Accountant 2, a fun, silly follow-up that finds Affleck’s cheerless Christian Wolff eight years on, still living a monastic life in his weaponry-fitted Airstream campervan, but now ready for romance.
To signal the change in tone from its straight-faced predecessor, it begins with Wolff gaming the system on a speed-dating night – resulting in a series of excruciating conversations with women who are swiftly disenchanted with his matter-of-fact answers (“I don’t have any friends”) and unsolicited financial advice.
But don’t let Wolff’s endearing Rain Man-style awkwardness fool you. The Accountant 2 is still a violent actioner. Wolff is tasked with tracking down the killers of his former government boss (JK Simmons) while he attempts to reconnect with his ruthless brother, Braxton (The Walking Dead‘s Jon Bernthal, clearly having a blast).
Together, the chalk-and-cheese siblings aid Cynthia Addai-Robinson’s Treasury agent Marybeth Medina to pursue justice, with each man trying to exploit his military training and years of illegal activity without incriminating himself for past misdeeds.
With neurodivergence having become the catch cry of the 2020s, it’s interesting to observe that Affleck’s reprisal feels more of a caricature of autism than it did in 2016. While the A-word is never said explicitly (in one scene Christian rebuffs a comment about his “condition” by asserting, “I’m just me”), Affleck adopts an awkward gait and needs to be told when something’s just a joke. There’s one terrifically satisfying scene when the socially awkward fellow astutely picks up how to line dance and actually cracks a smile.
Returning director Gavin O’Connor (The Warrior) is adept at guiding Affleck and Bernthal through military-style executions as a bunch of no-mark thugs are taken down. This time, the brothers are given plenty of space for shooting the shit, which delivers welcome breaths of humour amid the bloodshed.
The wordy script includes an X-Men-inspired subplot about clever children and a baddy with the unfortunately acronym-ed Acquired Savant Syndrome whose “special interests” tend towards extreme psychopathy. A third Accountant is in the works. Expect further liquidations.
Rating out of five: ★★★½
