2016's The Accountant performed modestly at the box office yet somehow became the most rented title on US VOD platforms of 2017. Despite such unlikely returns, it has taken almost a decade for a sequel to surface, with original director Gavin O'Connor and writer Bill Dubuque back on board. Despite having so much time to refine this, O'Connor and Dubuque's sequel plays like it was rushed to market, with a script desperately in need of a couple more rewrites and baggy pacing that cries out for some judicious editing.
Ben Affleck is back as Christian Wolff, the accountant whose autism infamously gives him superpowers. This time he's called in to help Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), the federal agent who was on his tail in the first movie (at least I think she was; it's been a decade ffs!!!), when her boss (JK Simmons) is murdered by a mysterious foe. Christian reunites with his hitman brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal), the two forming a brains and brawn double act.
The plot is relatively simple yet it's made to seem complex by the film's messy structure. My complaint regarding the first movie was that it felt like an eight-episode season of TV had been condensed to a two-hour movie, and The Accountant 2 suffers from the same issue. The film doesn't seem to realise it only has two hours to tell this story, and there are several scenes that could easily be excised to make it more zippy. I'm not sure why we need to spend five minutes with Bernthal's Braxton rehearsing a phone call to a woman he plans to buy a puppy from, for example. The annoying thing is, this franchise could actually make for great TV, as Wolff is exactly the sort of compelling protagonist hit shows were once built around.
The Accountant 2 can't quite decide what type of movie it is. There are moments where we could be watching a Batman movie, with Affleck essentially playing Bruce Wayne on the spectrum. At other points it's a Sherlock Holmes knockoff, complete with Wolff's very own Baker Street Irregulars in a group of autistic youngsters who all live in an institute like that house full of geniuses from the great Columbo episode 'The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case'. It briefly becomes a 1982 Burt Reynolds movie when Christian and Braxton visit a country and western bar (not a bad thing). The gun-toting climax is completely at odds with the rest of the movie, forcing us to ask how we're suddenly watching a Charles Bronson movie from 1986. Take out this bombastic climax however and The Accountant 2 is a talky, televisual affair that does little to justify seeing it on a big screen. Making Wolff and Braxton essentially superheroes means we never feel like they're in any real danger, and the movie never quite establishes its villains enough to make them a genuine threat. Nor is Addai-Robinson's Marybeth a sufficient straight man to the comic duo of Affleck and Bernthal. Once again I find myself asking what Shane Black might do with the potential that's wasted here.
To its credit, this sequel is at least more self-aware than its relatively straight-faced predecessor. The Accountant 2 is at its most entertaining when mining comedy from Christian's social awkwardness or Braxton's machismo. Affleck is so good in such moments that we wonder why he hasn't starred in more comedies. With his surprisingly moving MMA drama Warrior, O'Connor gave us one of the great recent portrayals of estranged brothers, so it's perhaps no surprise that The Accountant 2's best scenes are those that feature Christian and Braxton sparring. There are brief glimpses of the satisfying big or small screen series this could have been, but in general The Accountant 2 is an unfocussed mess. It's hard to imagine this sequel will become this year's biggest rental, but there's no accounting for taste.
Directed by: Gavin O'Connor
Starring: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Daniella Pineda, Allison Robertson, J.K. Simmons
