I hereby declare this review of The Accountant 2 (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video) to be a zone entirely free of mathematics-based jokes. To be clear, that incorporates tax-day and spreadsheet comedy, too. However, it is absolutely a safe space for mean critical commentary on this movie and its predecessor, 2016’s The Accountant, because they’re incredibly dumb. The first film, already a hoot because it essentially exists as a corollary to Ben Affleck donut memes, was a medium-sized hit whose post-theatrical pop-cultural cult following grew thanks to endless cable reruns, nudges from streaming algorithms and Teh Interwebs. It took a minute for The Accountant mania to slow-burn its way into “relevance,” hence the nine years that passed before Affleck reprised his ridiculous-ass role as an autistic man who lives in an Airstream trailer and works as both a crackerjack mob accountant and a black-ops-type kicker of asses. In case you can’t tell, I stand unenthused.
The Gist: Notable right off the bat is the tonal shift between movies. The Accountant didn’t intend to be funny, and therefore was funny. The Accountant 2 tries to be funny, and therefore is not funny. Funny how that happens, right? And the most high-larious thing about how The Accountant 2 begins has nothing to do with gunfire raining upon a heavily populated bar in an attempt to assassinate J.K. Simmons’ character (reprised from the first movie, albeit briefly), and more to do with how immediately impenetrably incomprehensible the plot is. I think I almost pared it down to something partially edible, and please note how I deftly sidestepped the temptation to say I “audited” it for you: The Simmons guy, who works for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, is trying to hunt down some human traffickers, and he contacts a mysterious assassin-type named Anais (Daniella Pineda) for info. The traffickers riddle the scene with bullets; Anais escapes like the violence ain’t no thang; Simmonsguy isn’t so fortunate. But before he dies, he scrawls FIND THE ACCOUNTANT on his soon-to-be-dead body.
And that’s what his successor at the agency, Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), sets out to do. Where is The Accountant? At a speed-dating event in Boise, of course, where the ladies line up to meet his well-kept Affleckian self, only to find their spirits promptly dampened. “You don’t have to amend your tax return for unclaimed appreciation,” he repeats to every prospective date, their faces sagging with disappointment, which, you know, lololol, so funny. See, this guy is Christian Wolff, an accounting whiz and gun-having warrior man whose autism renders social interactions awkward. He was Simmonsguy’s informant guy, now apparently retired from laundering mob dough and waiting for a plot to happen to him. And of course one does, when Marybeth finds him and asks him to help sort through all the stuff that Simmonsguy had on his Movie Crime Wall. You know the Movie Crime Wall, right? The array of photos and printouts and newspaper clippings tacked up on the plaster with strings strung between the stuff that’s connected, that symbol of a character’s obsessiveness and, at least in this case, a metaphor for what this plot asks us to do?
And so Christian pulls on his most badass pair of pleated khakis and laces up his hideous ergonomic running shoes to help. But he decides they need more help, so he calls in his younger brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal), a mercenary he hasn’t spoken to in eight years. And so Brax flies in so they can banter, hash over some hard feelings and punch and/or shoot guys in the face, be it rando jagoffs in country bars or true scumbucks in trafficking camps. Oh, and we learn that the helper voice on the other end of Christian’s phone is representative of a group of autistic children at a specialty school, working as uberhackers and directly assisting our Accountant protag with his contract murders. Is there a better place for autistic children in our society? Obviously not!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: We’ve all YEARNED and YEARNED for a mashup of Rain Man and Sound of Freedom, and now our dreams have finally come true.
Performance Worth Watching: I feel like we’ve been on the cusp of a BERNTHNAISSANCE for about a decade now. It’s hard to imagine just how crummy The Accountant 2 might be without him, so his attempts to gussy up this dopey thing with some go-for-broke character comedy (and the occasional dollop of convincing earnestness) make him the MVP.
Memorable Dialogue: The Computer Voice of the Autistic Child Hackers expresses its frustration with Marybeth’s myriad questions: “Heavy sigh. Would you like to bring the normie up to speed, Chris?”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: So who’s up for a wily, wacky-enjoyable evening of watching Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal gun down some heavily militarized White guys who’ve herded a school busful of enslaved Mexican migrant children into a mass grave? You? Or you? How about you? Whatever – The Accountant 2 takes nothing seriously, so why bother to point out its rampant tastelessness in the face of its clear and present attempt to launch two-plus hours of deadeningly concussive entertainment at us? So we’re faced with a Sophie’s-choice conundrum: Do we laugh and have a great time or cross our arms and tut-tut its various cultural insensitivities? So sayeth the movie, Good luck, jerks!
And so I leave it to you to determine if Affleck here portrays an inclusive hero representing the autism community, or a gross caricature. Arguments for either assertion are no doubt plentiful; pretzel yourself as you wish. Franchise director Gavin O’Connor’s tonal shift from poker- to clown-faced isn’t the only change from the first film – The Accountant 2 foregoes the detail-oriented and hyper-fixated Christian who mathematics-ed his way through problems in the first movie, dumbing him down to a deadpan action-movie anchor counterbalanced by his brother’s loosey-goosey anything-goes philosophy. Affleck and Bernthal bicker and quibble, air out their sincerities and then make their way to a peabrained Rambofied climax, giving us hope that they’ll find themselves in the same movie again, hopefully one that’s less bloated and moronic.
As for the plot. Part of the comic element of the Mission: Impossible films is how overwrought and convoluted the plots are, which I interpret as meta-commentary: In these types of movies, the story doesn’t matter in the slightest, so just bear down and feel it as the hero digs deeper than we ever thought he could while he saves the world. I draw this comparison because my (admittedly weary) brain can suss out no reason whatsoever for The Accountant 2 to be so confusing. I can see starting simple and fugueing it up to a level of headspinning complexity, but this screenplay just drops you in a whirlpool and asks you to dogpaddle your way out. There’s a fine line between challenging your audience and overwhelming it until it divests itself from the dramatic and emotional stakes and just waits around for the action to kick in. It dilutes the effectiveness of the characters and comedy, reducing the film to tedious exposition, brainless exhortations and numbing violence. Simply put, I was unamused.
Our Call: What a confounding mess. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.