ACCOUNTANT 2, THE
(director/writer: Gavin O’Connor; screenwriter: Bill Dubuque; cinematographer: Seamus McGarvey; editor: Richard Pearson; music: Bryce Dressner; cast: Ben Affleck (Christian Wolff), Jon Bernthal (Braxton), J.K. Simmons (Ray King), Allison Robertson (Justine), Alison Wright (Justine’s voice), Cynthia Addai-Robinson (Marybeth Medina), Daniella Pineda (Anais), Robert Morgan (Burke), Grant Harvey (Cobb), Abner Lozano (Gino Sanchez); Runtime: 125; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Ben Affleck, Lynette Howell Taylor, Mark Williams; Artists Equity/Amazon Studios/MGM; 2025)
“Probably hopes viewers are so entertained by the confusing story-line and the macho/comical star performance by Ben Affleck, they won’t notice or care about the large plot holes.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Gavin O’Connor (“The Accountant”/”Jane Got a Gun”) directed the original box office $155 million hit and also directs the sequel, a buddy comedy and a senseless violent action pic, which comes 9 years after the original thriller in 2016. It’s a stylish, globetrotting thriller with clunky dialogue and questionable morality concerns about finding justice. O’Connor co-writes the densely plotted pic with Bill Dubuque. The filmmaker probably hopes viewers are so entertained by the confusing story-line and the macho/comical star performance by Ben Affleck, they won’t notice or care about the large plot holes. It’s box office projections are more modest than those of the original.
The autistic mathematical savant mob accountant Christian Wolff (Ben Afleck), a legit C.P.A., moonlights as a freelancer to launder money for wealthy mobsters. He and his black sheep, motor-mouth, younger brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) were trained by their strict, abusive and gung-ho black ops Army father to be assassins, which caused their mom to split.
The fugitive Christian lives as a recluse in Boise, Idaho, in his Airstream trailer, comically doing badly at speed dating, as the socially awkward brainy hitman is aided in that endeavor by the nonverbal autistic savant Justine (Allison Robertson), who uses an electronic voice provided by the Brit actress Alisison Wright to communicate with him.
When Christian gets word that the new U.S. Treasury Department agent of the financial crimes division, Marybeth (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), the replacement for the retired Ray King (J.K. Simmons), wants to see him, Christian immediately returns to Los Angeles. He also calls his trigger-happy hitman estranged brother (who bumped off a dozen vics throughout Europe) to return from Berlin to help investigate who murdered Ray. The former agent was now working as a private dick hired by El Salvador immigrant parents wanting to find their missing kid snatched 8 years ago when he was 5.
The brothers help by using their smarts to investigate the suspicious characters identified, but their brutal methods are a turn-off, as Marybeth lets them investigate on their own.
The shady characters investigated are the treacherous mercenary assassin, the blonde Anais (Daniella Pineda), recovering from memory loss after a terrible accident, and the money laundering child trafficker, Burke (Robert Morgan), the film’s main villain. They both were seen on video surveillance in a Washington, D.C. seedy bar where Ray was killed by Burke’s unseen sniper henchman Cobb (Grant Harvey), as Anais fled the scene before she could be killed. Marybeth is concerned that before Ray was killed, he wrote in ball-point pen on his arm ‘call the accountant.’
The scenes of the brother opposites bantering back and forth, are the film’s best moments.
From here-on it turns into a procedural story filled with all sorts of complicated intrigues and various travel scenes to places like a prison camp in Juarez.
How watchable and entertaining is this trashy film depends on how you take to the B-film’s responses to America’s gun culture, your response to its call for acceptance of frontier justice as a solution to the gun violence problem, its in-your-face comedy, and by your reaction to how autism was depicted. Some viewers, like me, will find that The Accountant’s portrayal of autism doesn’t add up and is, indeed, false, exploitative and nonsensical.
It played at the SXSW Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 4/30/2025 GRADE: C
dennisschwartzreviews.com