The Accountant 2 Review: Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal’s Excellent Buddy-Movie Chemistry Can’t Mask Gavin O’Connor’s Heavy-Handed Sequel
A few days before attending the screening of The Accountant 2, I rewatched the first movie just to refresh my memory since it has been nine years already (!). Frankly, the 2016 original wasn’t much of a genre classic. Even after revisiting it, I still found the movie an uneven effort, despite Ben Affleck’s engaging lead performance and the novelty of its premise, centred on a titular autistic accountant who possesses John Wick-like tactical skills in weaponry and martial arts. Not to mention the wonderfully awkward chemistry between Affleck’s Christian Wolff a.k.a. Chris and Anna Kendrick’s Dana Cummings.
Too bad Kendrick is nowhere to be seen here in this sequel. Besides, her lighthearted presence was among the least lifesavers in the original. Instead, returning director Gavin O’Connor chooses to focus on the brotherly dynamic between Chris and Jon Bernthal’s long-lost sibling Braxton. It was a refreshing change of pace, at least for this franchise, to have a tonal shift into the buddy-movie territory. So, the last time Chris and Braxton crossed paths, the latter turned out to be a hitman working for the slippery Living Robotics founder played by John Lithgow in a sadly undermined supporting turn. The two ended up in a fight, which was mostly Braxton venting out his anger over Chris before they resolved their conflict.
The Accountant 2 plays slightly longer — four minutes more, to be exact — than the original, making me worried if the same heavy-handed flaw still rears its ugly head for the second time around. I hate to say this, but the sequel still trudges through Bill Dubuque’s laborious storytelling. And yes, he was the same screenwriter who wrote the first movie. Sure, The Accountant 2 gets off to a riveting start that ends with the murder of a pivotal character. This leads to Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), the deputy director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) from the Treasury Department, trying to reach out to Chris for help.
Meanwhile, Chris, who has been lying low ever since the events of the first movie, is now reintroduced as an autistic character who doesn’t mind attending a speed dating session. It’s nice to see Affleck’s otherwise socially awkward (and he still is in some ways) character is given some room to lighten up a little. When he and Marybeth eventually meet and agree to work together to solve the puzzle. Except for this sequel has nothing to do with messy and complicated accounting, but rather figuring out what the connections are between all the photos left by the deceased character earlier in the movie. Chris is still crunching numbers here, even though I realise the title has less to do with him being an accountant, but more with using his shrewd intelligence in analysing and solving difficult problems.
Connor does a good job establishing the mismatched chemistry between Chris, who doesn’t mind breaking the law if he has to and the strictly by-the-book Marybeth. It’s fun to watch them disagree over their ways of doing things differently, namely a scene where Chris resorts to physical violence until he gets the answer he’s been looking for.
Then, Braxton enters the picture after Chris calls for his assistance. Connor levels up Bernthal’s character by making him a co-star, and I enjoy watching him team up with Affleck’s Chris. Their buddy-movie dynamic works like a charm, evidently in a few scenes, like when they have small talks and tease each other while lounging around the chairs atop the caravan. Or the scene where they spend their leisure time hanging around in a cowboy bar, complete with line dancing and throwing punches.
The sequel equally widens the scope of how Chris’ network, led by the watchful handler, Justine (Allison Robertson), operates behind the scenes with her crew of brilliant young autists. At one point, there’s a notable moment where Justine and her crew’s intricate hacking skills are put into good use to help unearth important information. For a while there, the first half looks like Connor is heading in the right direction.
But just when I thought The Accountant 2 would end up as a marked improvement, the movie subsequently collapses under its own weight as the story grows needlessly convoluted. Pacing becomes increasingly erratic, and if that’s not enough, the movie slipped in an inept subplot revolving around a mysterious blonde assassin, Anaïs (Daniella Pineda). The supposedly high-stakes third act with the sequel’s biggest action set piece takes place in an enemy compound at Juarez, but the ensuing gunfight is disappointingly routine while lacking the much-needed propulsive tension. It doesn’t help either that The Accountant 2 seems to neglect giving us a memorable antagonist, resulting in a rather anticlimactic finale.
