Movie Review – The Accountant 2

I was a huge fan of the first film about a man who was neurodivergent and was raised in a violent world but found a way to help the FBI catch bad guys, but still worked with bad guys. It took the action genre in a new direction and I found that interesting.

In this new film, Ben Affleck’s Christian Wolff is sought out by the FBI’s new director after his old contact dies. He helps look for missing immigrants and is sent down a rabbit hole of Mexican drug cartels and assassins with amnesia. He brings in his brother (Jon Bernthal) to help. Reunited, these two must work through their issues to solve the case.

I like this sequel for very different reasons than I liked the first film. In the first, I liked the dynamic between Anna Kendrick and Ben Affleck’s characters, and the inevitable reunion of two brothers who lost contact as boys. And I really enjoyed watching the FBI contact Wolff fed info to (J.K. Simmons) teach his new employee that sometimes to catch the bad guys, you had to work with someone whose good/bad compass pointed toward ambiguity. 

I like the second film because Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal play their polar opposite characters with such ease that’s it’s hard to not enjoy how they play off one another. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s painful. But at the end of the day, these two brothers finally have the relationship they both needed and it’s great to see.

As far as the action aspects of this film are concerned, there are still tightly spun sequences that put our protagonists in mortal danger. These juxtaposed against the quieter moments between the brothers make for a bit of an uneven watch, but I didn’t mind too much. Even the scene in a bar where Affleck learns to line dance and intentionally picks a fight so Bernthal can have some action which feels out of place in the film but is enjoyable enough that I didn’t care that it was there. It’s equal parts brother comedy and violent action movie. 

3.5 out of 5 stars.