Silly Accountant 2 Offers Up an Enjoyably Amusing Return on Audience Investment
I’m not surprised that director Gavin O’Connor, writer Bill Dubuque, and producer-star Ben Affleck have reunited for a sequel to their 2016 actioner The Accountant. It was a minor box office success that audiences positively responded to. It also introduced several interesting characters who would have been worth seeing more of had they popped up in another adventure.
What is a little shocking is that it took the creative team almost a full decade to bring number-crunching autistic savant Christian Wolff (Affleck) back to the big screen to solve another mystery. It’s hard not to wonder, do people even remember who this character is? Does it matter that Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson Cynthia Addai-Robinson, and J.K. Simmons all return for the sequel? Will anyone care?
They should, mainly because The Accountant 2, as silly and nonsensical as it is (and with a bizarre lack of accounting this time), is even more fun than its predecessor. Sure, Christian gets to team up with his mercenary younger brother Braxton (Bernthal) to kick, punch, stab, and shoot several suitably abhorrent baddies, but that’s not what is important. At its heart, this sequel is nothing more than a laidback “hangout” comedy. Its best scenes are all ones where Affleck and Bernthal get to kick back, relax, and gregariously riff off one another with goofily intoxicating abandon. These frequent moments between the two are a constant delight.
The story picks up eight years after the events of the previous film. Christian is still tooling around the country in his tricked-out Airstream helping unscrupulous individuals with their money problems. But the constant loneliness is starting to get to him, so much so he even hacks the algorithm for a speed dating service to see if he can get a date. The accountant isn’t successful.
Needless to say, when Justice Department financial crimes chief Marybeth Medina (Addai-Robinson) reaches out to Christian for help after the murder of her former superior Ray King (Simmons), he’s more than willing to stop everything he’s doing and lend a hand. But what the pair discover is a complex web of human trafficking, child abduction, drug running, murder for hire, and other nefarious and sickening crimes. It all leads back to a nameless, mysteriously lethal woman (Daniella Pineda), and if Marybeth and Christian can find her, maybe they can bring those responsible for King’s slaying to justice.
The actual mechanics of how the criminal organizations behind all the violence work don’t make a lot of sense, mainly because neither O’Connor nor Dubuque appear interested in spending too much time examining them in any detail. They do bad things. They ruin lives, They kidnap children. They kill people, seemingly for sport. They’re evil. So, while Christian and Braxton are hardly beacons of altruistic grace under fire or paragons of virtue, they’re far less repugnant than the demons they are hellbent on destroying. They have a moral code, and I guess that’s all that matters.
What the sequel does care about is the connection between the two brothers. Once they are together, it’s magic time. Affleck and Bernthal are in immediate harmony. Better than that, they make this strange, complicated, and honestly rather heartbreaking sibling relationship instantaneously genuine. They have this scene where they’re sitting atop Christian’s Airstream, and while they do jaw somewhat about the dangerous situation they’re in, mostly they’re just shooting the breeze like two estranged brothers with a deep, unexpressed longing to reconnect.
It’s sequences like this that make this sequel matter. O’Connor or Dubuque make sure that every flawed, semi-broken (to completely shattered) primary character in their story is a multidimensional being deserving of empathy. When push comes to shove, many of them are compelled to do the right thing when called to do so, and they wouldn’t have it any other way. While their motivations for doing this unquestionably vary, their determination to get the job done no matter what the cost still proves to be universal.
This gives The Accountant 2 an unexpected edge. It’s funny and moving in a variety of unexpected ways. While O’Connor’s gift for staging gruff, visually pugilistic action sequences is as present here as it was in the previous picture, it’s his understanding that it is the quieter moments, the funnier bits, and the humanistic elements that will ultimately allow this thriller to resonate with an audience. Much like its predecessor, this sequel’s entertainment numbers add up, and thanks to Affleck and Bernthal’s captivating chemistry, the watchability return on investment is impressively significant.
Film Rating: 3 (out of 4)
