Affleck and Berenthal are back in THE ACCOUNTANT 2, which, beyond being a great action film, is a hell of a lot warmer and earnest than you’d ever guess!
The Accountant was always a bit of an odd duck. Released in 2016, the entire “superhuman autism” angle always felt more like an SNL gag than an actual movie. As a film, it’s fine, following Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), CPA and Assassin extraordinaire, as he starts to uncover a dark secret at a robotics company. The twists and turns are fun, but it’s a bit overly serious, and doesn’t really bring much to the table, action wise (doesn’t help that The Equalizer essentially did the “autistic assassin” thing 2 years earlier, without being explicit about it).
All of this is to say it was definitely surprising to learn that we were getting The Accountant 2 nearly a decade later. Many of the same players are back, including an expanded role for Jon Berenthal, who plays Affleck’s brother. So, how does this deadly CPA fair in the 2020s?
I’m happy to say that this is not only a whole hell of a lot of fun, but also much cuter than you’d ever expect it to be!
This time, Christian is enlisted by Treasury Agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) to help her find the people that killed her old boss, and help solve his last case. Affleck does so through plenty of shooting, ass kicking and autistic ticks. While not as consistent with the ass kicking as its predecessor (most of the action is in the final 3rd), what The Accountant 2 focuses on is the twists and turns of its story. While some elements are a bit overwrought and on the nose (there’s a whole bit where Affleck keeps repeating what one victim said, “I don’t have kids”, just to come to the conclusion that “the children must be in danger!”), the central mystery actually kept me guessing throughout, with the final reveal being a genuine “oh, wait, what?” moment for me.
What elevates The Accountant 2, though, even over its predecessor, is the relationship between Affleck’s Christian and Berenthal’s Brax. Both Berenthal and Affleck bounce off each other perfectly, taking on a natural sibling relationship, with deep shades of the “buddy cop” archetype. Brax is continuously befuddled by Christian’s ways, while Affleck plays a great deadpan straight man to his frustrations. Why it works is because there is never any true animosity between the two; Brax just wants to be closer to his brother, and Christian wants to find a way to let him in. It’s a relationship built on love, so even when they are squabbling, it’s all in good fun.
As a perfect illustration, there is a sequence about halfway through where the brothers visit a honkey-tonk bar together. The scenes opens with them arguing about Christians inability to talk to women, leading into a goofy as all hell (in a good way) square dancing scene, before ending on a freeze frame right out of a Burt Reynolds film. The scene has zero effect on the plot, and exists almost as a vignette, but is something that made The Accountant 2 a pretty great time, and something that modern cinema seems to be sorely missing; sometimes, the plot doesn’t need to be advanced. Sometimes, we just want to watch these characters hang out and get into trouble with each other. It’s called character development, and it’s why this was much better than it had any right to be.
To those that might have been a bit put off by the original films “mental illness as a super power” plot point, though, you might find this no better on that front, if not a little worse. Joining Christian in his journey is a group of autistic children that act as a network of hackers. Like Christian, they are presented as somewhat supernatural in their abilities, able to hack into any system in the world with ease, all of them working out of a small New England school that has some Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters vibes. There is also a wild “traumatic brain injury turns you into a super soldier” plot line that, again, is bonkers and right on the line of potentially being problematic. I personally found most of this all so goofy as to be comical, but, not being a part of that marginalized group, I could understand someone finding it all a bit tone deaf.
With the release (and success) of Den Of Thieves 2 earlier this year, it seems we may be entering a new era of buddy cop films, and The Accountant 2 is very much a part of that genre. I’m not surprised I liked this; action films with guns are exactly my wheelhouse. What I am surprised by is how absolutely charmed I was by this. Be it the way Berenthal mockingly copies an annoyed Affleck, or the way Affleck says “Braxton” after Berenthal throws out his sunblock, or the way that, after an intense gunfight, this literally ends on a “save the cat” moment. The Accountant 2 is earnest, cute, and fun as hell. Not exactly what I was expecting from my action cinema in 2025, but a much welcomed reprieve.
