The Accountant 2, 2025.
Directed by Gavin O’Connor.
Starring Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, J.K. Simmons, Daniella Pineda, Alison Robertson, Robert Morgan, Grant Harvey, Andrew Howard, Matt Linton, Cassandra Blair, Nik Sanchez, John Patrick Jordan, Fernando Chien, Abner Lozano, Catherine Adell, Michael Tourek, and Monica Bhatnagar.
SYNOPSIS:
Christian Wolff applies his brilliant mind and illegal methods to reconstruct the unsolved puzzle of a Treasury chief’s murder.
It’s not good that director Gavin O’Connor’s The Accountant 2 (once again working from a screenplay by Bill Dubuque), ostensibly an action-based crime mystery, is usually only entertaining when it’s less concerned with serious-minded plotting and more about goofing off.
A sequence where Ben Affleck’s autistic money-laundering accountant Christian Wolff attends a speed-dating convention where the app’s creators boast about matchmaking success, only for him to reverse engineer the algorithm to his benefit but hilariously blow up the five minutes he is given with each woman, crosscut with him explaining to their faces how he did it? That’s comedy. Watching Christian and his hotheaded instigator but lonely and unloved younger brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) hanging out and working through sibling drama while randomly hitting up a country club to do some line dancing? Sign me up for more of that!
While mathematical puzzles and action worked for The Accountant, here it comes across as an obligatory roadblock to some of the wonderfully playful and heartfelt character work Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal are doing. At one point, someone says, “I don’t know if I’m looking at one puzzle or ten puzzles”, which is somewhat appropriate considering that the way into this sequel’s mystery is an uninteresting, scattered mess. It also pulls out one of the oldest clichés in the book: killing off a significant character from that first film as a launchpad for more conflict.
Christian’s character and world are interesting enough that a sequel doesn’t need to repeat the same tricks. When I discovered this sequel was in production, I naturally said, “Who the hell is asking for this?” After seeing the movie, it’s evident there is more to explore with these characters, particularly Christian and Braxton. Yes, this is all a roundabout way of saying The Accountant 2 doesn’t need action or a mystery to solve; you can plop these characters down and do something much more different and engaging with them, which is largely proven true when it does function as a hangout movie.
Nevertheless, the mystery involves Christian alerted by Treasury agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) that the former contact he regularly leaked sensitive information to, J.K. Simmons’ Ray King, was murdered. Through clever means before dying, Ray sets up a way for his investigation to be passed on to Christian, which involves the disappearance of an undocumented immigrant family years ago, with only a photo to go off of where the son was roughly five and likely around 13 now. Christian brings in his contract killer brother Braxton for assistance and knowledge about that criminal underbelly.
Stretches of the film see the three interacting with one another, with Marybeth vehemently objecting to the illegal methods Christian and Braxton will take to get whatever information they need, even if it means physical violence and kidnapping. Unfortunately, there is something off-putting and annoying about this dynamic, likely stemming from clichés. The one time it does work comes through in a truly unsettling scene of unethical behavior where Christian communicates with his nonverbal handler. (Alison Robertson) who runs an Academy for gifted autists that questionably amounts to teaching them everything there is to know about computer hacking, using a database to identify a civilian who unknowingly took a selfie that was caught on traffic camera footage that could lead to information on the identity and whereabouts of Ray’s killer, an assassin played by Daniella Pineda, if her devices are broken into and that photo is stolen.
The Accountant 2 wants to explore this moral shadiness. It also wants to be a story about sibling friction while considering Christian’s autism in a manner that would be sincere if the rest of the film wasn’t outlandish. There is a touching moment where Braxton asks Christian if they are estranged because of him or his brother’s condition. Christian responds, “I’m just me”. It’s an emotionally piercing exchange, but we wish The Accountant 2 would figure out what it wants to be.
Despite a brutal neck-snap stomp, the final climactic action sequence is forgettable and mostly weightless, especially since the reason Christian puts his life on the line to save the aforementioned teenager is also preposterous. Admittedly, there is a decent twist, but most of this puzzle is uninteresting, leading to flat dramatic stakes and action. On top of all that, there is hardly any accounting done here. So, The Accountant 2 is trying to do everything, in turn, doing nothing, while also forgetting to do what’s in the title. In the one scene accounting is done, it’s hilarious; another of many moments cementing that these should be well-meaning comedies coasting on star chemistry from now on.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
