Henry O'Brien
In a piece about Hal Ashby’s Being There for Film Obsessive, Christian Hartshorn perfectly identifies one of the key flaws with the 2016 Gavin O’Connor-Ben Affleck collaboration The Accountant. Hartshorn describes how there is a lack of strong portrayals of Autism in popular culture, leaving room for films where Autism is treated like a superpower in the O’Connor film. Unfortunately, the sequel, The Accountant 2, which re-unites O’Connor and Affleck for a third time (the other film being The Way Back), takes the original premise of Autism-as-superpower and doubles down on it. Along with Affleck’s character, Christian Wolff, being an accountant and a criminal-extraordinaire, he has a whole team of Autistic children who have the special ability to hack any device on the planet. While the children are actually played by Autistic actors, the characters have no humanity to them aside from being Autistic children who help out Christian.
This shallow characterization is just one of the many flaws of The Accountant 2, which premiered on March 9 at South by Southwest. The film finally gives Christian time with his hitman brother, Braxton (Jon Bernthal), which allows the audience to delight in the chemistry between Affleck and Bernthal. The brother dynamic is undeniably the movie’s greatest strength, but The Accountant 2 is littered with boring subplots and an uneven script that leads to a third act that’s as entertaining as filing taxes.
We return to the world of The Accountant eight years after the events of the first film, where Christian is once again alone in his Airstream RV, only this time he’s trying to find love. But following her boss’s death (J.K. Simmons), Treasury agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) must enlist both Christian and Braxton’s help. Some of the so-called tension in the movie comes down to Marybeth’s disapproval of Christian’s methods to gain information. Whether it be through Christian using violence to intimidate criminals or using children to hack into phones and computers, Marybeth feels there are lines being crossed at every turn. However, the script, written by Bill Dubuque, feels so obligated to create these reservations because it would rather spend time building the relationship between the Christian and Braxton. Indeed, this is where The Accountant 2 attempts to be another entry in the “dudes rock” canon.
It’s not only been eight years since the events of the first film, it’s been eight years since the brothers last saw each other. Braxton and Christian of course come together to help out Marybeth, but they eventually go out on their own, trying to make up for some lost time. The true highlight of the movie is when they go to a country bar where Affleck busts out some moves in line dancing as a stunned Bernthal looks on. The brothers are snarky but loving towards one another, which creates plenty of moments for comedy, and with both of them being assassins, they can’t help but get into some fights with angry patrons at the country bar. Additionally, there’s a running gag between Braxton and Christian where they try to figure out whether the former is either a cat person or a dog person. There’s a clear Midnight Run dynamic between Affleck and Bernthal, and The Accountant 2 seems inclined to be a miniature version of that classic 1988 action comedy.
But the film spends nowhere near enough time with Christian and Braxton. Instead, we have to learn about the backstory of Anaïs (Daniella Pineda), a Mexican immigrant mother who becomes a heartless assassin after losing her family to a ruthless criminal organization (Is it the cartel? Who knows! The film doesn’t care enough to know). Obviously, action films like The Accountant 2 don’t necessarily need to care about the plot details too well. If there’s great action set pieces, then it’ll satisfy viewers’ tastes. But guess what? There is barely any action! Aside from the opening where J.K. Simmons gleefully beats up goons in a bathroom, the only other action sequence is toward the end of the film. In between, Affleck’s character intimidates some thugs but barely shows off any moves. No fight lasts for more than about two minutes or so. There’s very few displays of craftsmanship or excitement in an action movie that lasts over two hours. Quite simply, the film offers very little justification for why 30 minutes of this film shouldn’t have been cut out.
The Accountant 2 will no doubt delight the audience with the dynamic between Bernthal and Affleck but if they make a sequel to this movie, I sincerely hope it’s a tight 90-minute action sequence where Jon Bernthal is wearing a cowboy hat and running over bad guys with a pickup truck. Because when that happens in this film, there’s nothing better. But when The Accountant 2 cuts away from that, you genuinely might have more fun understanding what a W-9 form is.
