The Accountant 2 Review

I was a big fan of the first Accountant movie. An autistic accountant who’s also a trained assassin? Sounds nuts, but Ben Affleck and Anna Kendrick made it work. Christian Wolff was intense, the action was killer, and the story stuck with you. So I was stoked when I heard about The Accountant 2, hoping it’d bring the same heat. It’s got some of the juice that made the first movie great, like solid fights and brotherly love, but it ultimately holds itself back from reaching those heights again.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

THE GOOD

The Accountant 2 nails the action, just like the first. Chris Wolff takes down bad guys with deadly efficiency, and the fight scenes, especially a big raid on a Juarez prison camp, keep you glued to the screen. The 132-minute runtime moves quickly though it has enough fluff that could’ve been cut out to trim it down some. You don’t really want to have to get up for a bathroom break at a movie like this. The real selling point for me, though, is Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal as Chris and his brother Braxton. They’re awesome together, whether they’re brutally dispatching other assassins or joking around with each other on an airstream. Bernthal’s charm lights up every scene, and Affleck’s the perfect straight man. It’s the best part of the movie, hands down. Made me miss my brother and had him calling me up and asking me which of the two I thought we were (I’m Braxton).

THE BAD

Here’s where things get iffy. To me, Chris sounds off. His speech pattern, which I remember as tied to his autism in the first movie, feels even more stilted and slightly higher pitched now, like the way high school kids mock special needs kids. I could be misremembering, but it threw me off. The script doesn’t help, making Chris quippy like he’s in a Marvel movie. The first film was straight-up serious, and these cheesy one-liners feel don’t always feel forced but they definitely fell out of place.

Anna Kendrick’s Dana is MIA and her replacement just doesn’t fit the vibe. She’s got no spark with Affleck or Bernthal and she’s supposed to be the moral voice but she goes along with crimes, commits some herself, and gets people killed when she goes rogue. It’s tough to root for her. The main villain, Burke, is also a snooze. You don’t even really know why he’s the bad guy (a white coyote?) until deep into the movie. And his sidekick, Cobb, is even worse. He wears a Hawaiian shirt but lacks the charisma needed to be a Hawaiian shirt-wearing villain.

THE UGLY

I know autism is this film’s whole deal but it feels misused here. The first movie made Chris’ autism a key part of his accounting and assassin skills. Here, it’s just there to make him seem weird and quirky. And I’m over the autistic savant/child genius trope. A bunch of nonverbal children hacking government drones? Suspension of disbelief, be damned. It just seems like propaganda to make autism seem like a superpower and not a potentially debilitating condition which is fine for a feel-good children’s movie, but this is an R rated film for adults. Let’s grow up a little.

The big twist is another tired one: the completely average Salvadoran mom they’re trying to find had an accident, got facial reconstruction surgery, and came out a totally different-looking assassin with no memory. Seriously. How many tropes is that in one? It’s lazy. Worse, she remembers enough to kill Burke for trapping her son, Alberto, in Juarez but never reunites with him. That’s a huge letdown for a movie that needed some heart. And why did he keep those kids alive that long anyway? What was his goal?

THE VERDICT

The Accountant 2 has its moments. The action’s dope and Affleck and Bernthal are a blast as brothers, but weird character shifts, dumb quips, and used-up tropes drag it down. Cut out pointless scenes like the dog breeder conversation or dating app stuff and it’d be tighter. If you dig the Wolff brothers, you’ll have fun, but the first one’s still the real deal. Rewatch that instead.

RATING: 3.5/5