‘The Accountant 2’ REVIEW: A middling and regressive turn from the original
‘The Accountant 2’ REVIEW: A middling and regressive turn from the original
Nearly a decade later, Ben Afleck reprises his role as Christian Wolff, a high-functioning neurodivergent accountant in the American action film The Accountant 2. In the original 2016 film The Accountant, his strength in numbers and background in martial arts led him to commit numerous economic crimes, money laundering for criminal organizations and camouflaging his wealth as financial investments, ultimately resulting in violence to protect himself. Inevitably, this resulted in a growing body count that only increases in the sequel.
Now, Christian is tasked by returning character Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) to investigate the murder of her mentor, federal agent Rey King (J.K. Simmons). This leads him to seek help from his estranged brother, Braxton ‘Brax’ Wolff (Jon Bernthal), introduced in the original film as the second-in-command to the main antagonist Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow), whose company was the focus of the original film as Christian investigated them for embezzlement, pinning him against Brax.
The selling point of this sequel is the two brothers and their efforts to work together despite their broken relationship. Beyond the conflicts arising from their nature of work, Brax held a much deeper hatred for Christian, blaming him for the death of their father who took a bullet for him in the original film.
Afleck and Bernthal gave convincing performances as brothers and old friends rekindling their relationship at a natural course. Christian and Brax throw snarky comments at each other throughout the film, admittedly too many that it becomes unnecessary, but it somewhat works in terms of showing them making up for their lost time bickering as they would in their youth. However, their best performance as a duo is when one shows vulnerability, specifically hard-hitting beats from Brax to Christian, expressing his anxiety which brought some normalcy to the story.
This character dynamic is arguably the central point of the sequel considering its significance to Christian as a protagonist struggling with social interactions and coming from a tarnished familial background.
Unfortunately, the rest of the film derails from the strengths of its predecessor, losing any sense of subtlety. In the sequel, Christian funds a school of highly intelligent neurodivergent children to work for him, now that he is much richer compared to his wealth in the original film. This was poorly executed, stereotypical and overly convenient, supporting a caricature of neurodivergence in a large group of children. This negatively impacts the protagonist as a neurodivergent character who, at its core, is supposedly on a wide spectrum of people with different strengths and struggles.
The Accountant 2 is merely average with its story, lacking depth to its characters and carrying lapses in its plot. Its strongest appeal is its action scenes for anyone who just wants to watch the mandatory action film showing in cinemas. For those who plan to watch it for Afleck, he was admittedly better in the original film, with Bernthal doing much of the heavy lifting for this one.
The Accountant 2 is now showing in cinemas.
