Two exciting scenes exist in The Accountant 2. However, you have to wade through a lot of generic crime thriller material to get there. Screenwriter and Accountant mastermind Bill Dubuque begins Accountant 2 with multiple prologues before audiences reunite with mysterious autistic assassin/accountant Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck). This guy spends his days living in an RV, helping unsavory clients (warlords, cartel leaders, etc.) keep their books clean, and getting into wacky antics at speed dating events. However, when retired FinCEN director Raymond King (J.K. Simmons) is killed with text reading "call The Accountant" scribbled on his arm, Wolff takes on a more personal mission.
Turns out King was searching for a missing El Salvadoran family. King's former mentee, Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), can't make heads or tails of the deceased man's clues. Wolff, though, see's what others can't. The greatest conspiracy that this missing family might be embroiled in, though, will require some extra help. Not even Wolff's tech-genius pal Justine (Allison Robertson) is enough when it comes to roughing people up. It's time for Wolff to call in his estranged assassin brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal), who yearns for a closer relationship with the sibling he once spent decades searching for.
In an ominous sign for this action/thriller, Accountant 2 is best when it’s just focusing on Wolff and Braxton chilling. Anytime someone reached for a gun in this Gavin O’Connorr directorial effort, I could feel a yawn bubbling in my throat. However, scenes where Wolff and Braxton relax in lawn chairs on top of an RV or a lengthy set piece where Braxton (on his own) rehearses an important phone call are terrific. Affleck and Bernthal have impressively strong chemistry together while the latter performer is quite skilled comedically. In terms of comic timing and physicality, Bernthal (an actor most famous for his intense roles) demonstrates laud-worthy chops.
The duo are the centerpiece of one of those two Accountant 2 highpoints. Said creative peak comes when Wolff and Braxton go to a honkey-tonk bar and the former character catches the eye of a pretty woman. Weirdly wholesome energy abounds from Bernthal and the deployment of a freeze-frame to cap out the sequence is worthy of a chef’s kiss. The other highlight comes from Justine aiding Wolff and company when all looks hopeless. Turns out Justine has a whole squad of autistic savants in a room so dominated with computer screens that it looks like a NASA control center. All of these neurodivergent souls can hack into any phone or electronic device with as much ease as blinking.
The whole scene involves autistic people engaging in the kind of Patriot Act-friendly material that sent Lucus Fox packing at the end of The Dark Knight. Still, there is something fun about watching a gaggle of autistic people (played by actual autistic performers) getting to be bad-asses on the silver screen. Richard Pearson's editing gets sharper in this set piece too as the camera precisely jumps around from Justine's tech domicile to a random kitchen to Accountant 2's three lead characters. No bullets go off in these two set pieces, yet they still offer the most edge-of-your-seat thrills.
The rest of the feature is a reminder that director Gavin O’Connor is nowhere near as proficient at action thrillers as he is with sports cinema like Warrior and Miracle. Most of the plot involves rudimentary shallow and decidedly American approaches to immigrants, people of color, sex workers, neurodivergence, and American Intelligence agencies (“we don’t torture people in our agencies!” one heroic character naively proclaims). Lacking subversiveness just makes it hard to differentiate The Accountant 2 from similar films of its ilk.
Given that the greatest entertainment here comes from the simplest pleasures (like Affleck and Bernthal’s banter), it’s disappointing how tediously convoluted the plot is. The whole thing devolves into a labyrinthine saga about a kidnapped family, Mexican compounds, and a fateful car accident in a parking garage. Too much screentime is dedicated to folks staring at computer screens or tax forms and rigidly reciting exposition. There’s no speed, fun, or tension in this world of assassins and kidnappers. It’s just excessive hollow blabbering that I can’t imagine appealing to anyone.
Most bizarrely of all is how these Accountant movies keep lacking good, memorable villains. Despite these features having such a heightened lead character, he never gets to confront an equivalent to Hans Gruber or John Lithgow in Cliffhanger. This time around, a guy named Bukre (Robert Morgan) and his lackey Cobb (Grant Harvey). The latter character's most distinctive traits are always wearing Hawaiian pattern shirts and looking way too much like a Jack Reynor doppelganger. While Bernthal’s most hysterical moments radiate specificity, The Accountant 2’s baddies never leave a dent on the viewer’s mind.
A finale centered on shooting down a bunch of forgettable gun-toting goons in a drab desert locale only reinforces this problem. It’s impossible to invest in the gunfire since the opposition is so thinly sketched. All that monotonous expository dialogue resulted in such a disposable climax. Oh, if only the script had return to that honky-tonk bar!
The Accountant 2 is mostly painless but forgettable CBS procedural material. It is frustrating, though, how this production could’ve easily been boosted with more striking imagery and less dense plotting. “Less is more” has endured as a wise piece of advice for a reason. Gavin O’Connor and company should’ve heeded it. At least the listlessness of the “twists” and crime saga material makes those two standout sequences even more of a treat. Make an Accountant 3 that’s just about supportive Jon Bernthal and those autistic hackers, I’ll buy a ticket right away.