Movie Review: The Accountant 2

I’m currently making my way through the Mission: Impossible movies in advance of the allegedly final installment releasing in a few weeks, and going from the first to the second in that franchise is a somewhat jarring experience. It’s rare to encounter a sequel to a hit film that so completely changes the tone from its predecessor as to make one wonder if the filmmakers had even seen it. The Accountant 2 doesn’t make quite that drastic of a shift from the 2016 original though it does feel noticeably different. Luckily, it’s not the borderline disaster that Mission: Impossible II is.

The film begins with the dramatic death of returning character Raymond King (J.K. Simmons). When Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), who took his old job as the director of FinCEN, is informed of what happened she is asked to identify his body, where she is surprised to find that he had written “find the accountant” on his arm. She’s never really worked with him directly before, and is reluctant to reach out, but decides that her old boss wouldn’t mention him lightly and so manages to get a message to him.

Said “accountant”, Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), surprises Medina in a parking garage and quickly agrees to help when she fills him in. It appears that King’s death was somehow related to his search for a Salvadorean family that went missing while trying to enter the United States. With his advanced reasoning skills Wolff is able to ascertain a great deal about the family’s path and decides to reach out to his estranged brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal), a highly skilled assassin, for help. Medina is quickly put off by the pair’s unorthodox and illegal methods and breaks off to work the case alone, while powerful criminals begin pursuing the trio to prevent them from learning the truth.

Whereas the first movie had many more elements of a traditional spy thriller, including a somewhat silly villain, this time around things lean more heavily into the action genre, though ironically the central mystery’s twists aren’t so heavily telegraphed. The subject matter is also much darker this around, drastically increasing the emotional stakes. In keeping with current trends, the humor has also been upped pretty significantly. It largely works at keeping things from becoming too dour, though it’s a surprise when outright silly scenes like Wolff attending a speed dating meet-up first appear, even if they do ultimately serve character development purposes.

This isn’t the sort of movie that asks for a lot from most of its cast, basically just requiring them to look cool and/or “bad” and like they know their way around a fight. That said, it’s clear that Affleck, director Gavin O’Connor, and screenwriter Bill Dubuque took great care to avoid turning Wolff’s autism into a characterization. The movie may play a bit too heavily into the stereotype that the condition is akin to a superpower, but it still mostly handles it respectfully and Affleck can be surprisingly touching in the role. Likewise, Bernthal stands out as his brother, who is dealing with his own feelings of loneliness, and the two make for a great on-screen pairing.

Despite the relatively straight-forward nature of the plot, it does still occasionally become challenging to keep track of the various connections between the characters, though in the end some of that doesn’t matter much. Simultaneously lighter and darker than the original, The Accountant 2 nevertheless also represents a slight improvement. The two leads are easy to root for, the action is thrilling, and the topical story keeps the audience invested. It’s hardly perfect, but it all adds up to an exciting ride. ★★★½