An assassin with autism teams up with his estranged brother to track down a kidnapped child in The Accountant 2, a belated sequel to the 2016 original opening in Prague and cinemas worldwide this weekend. While the previous film was generally well-regarded, it didn’t exactly leave audiences clamoring for a follow-up; thanks to a deceptively character-driven narrative and first-rate performances from Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal, this one exceeds expectations and delivers a more satisfying overall experience.
The Accountant 2 opens with a secret meeting between Ray King (J.K. Simmons), former director at the Treasury Department’s financial crimes division, and a shadowy John Wick-style assassin named Anaïs (Daniella Pineda). King can barely get out the message that he wants her to track down an El Salvadorian family that has gone missing before the pair are ambushed by some other assassins and King is shot dead in the street.
Treasury agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) is called in to investigate the death of her former mentor, and finds one last message scrawled onto his arm: find The Accountant. Unable to put King’s evidence board back together again, Medina does indeed reach out to Christian Wolff (Affleck), himself a shadowy John Wick-style assassin (and, at least in the first film, a real-deal accountant for international crime rings) to help solve the mystery behind what King was working on—and who killed him.
When Wolff and Medina latch onto the trail of a human trafficking organization that has been forcing women into sex work by kidnapping their children, they decide they can use a little additional firepower. So Christian reaches out to his estranged brother Braxton (Bernthal), who just happens to be, you guessed it, a shadowy John Wick-style assassin who steps over some dead bodies in Berlin on his way back to help out his brother in L.A.
The plot of The Accountant 2 is just barely coherent, and would probably fall apart if you gave it any more thought than returning screenwriter Bill Dubuque did. And there’s not a whole lot of action this time around, either: outside of the initial fisticuffs with Simmons, there’s a good 100 minutes of detective work before the genuinely exciting shoot ’em up finale, which recalls the stormy conclusion of The Equalizer 2 as a sequel set piece that outdoes anything in the original.
But where this Accountant shines is in the character work. Much of the movie is devoted to Christian and Braxton, who share long stretches of screen time chatting in a trailer park or grabbing beers at the local cowboy bar. Affleck is playing the neurodivergent character (and seems to be doing a pretty accurate Elon Musk impression at points), but Bernthal’s Braxton has his own issues, borne of deep-rooted insecurities.
We don’t really understand what’s going on in The Accountant 2 until more than halfway through the movie, and even then, there’s little urgency in the narrative until a ticking clock is introduced with about 20 minutes to go. But watching Affleck and Bernthal play off each other here is pure joy; Dubuque’s dedication to these characters is unusual for this kind of mainstream action movie, and his deconstruction of the kind of macho stereotype played by Bernthal is especially engaging.
Much to the chagrin of RFK Jr., autism is a kind of superpower in the world of The Accountant 2. Christian works with an entire team of young autistic savants under the guise of the Harbor Neuroscience treatment center; they hack into surveillance systems worldwide to get him the intel he needs. They’re coordinated by Justine, played by neurodivergent actress Allison Robertson and voiced (it’s a text-to-speech thing, we assume) by Alison Wright.
The Accountant 2 may not win points for plot coherence, but it’s well put together by returning director Gavin O’Conor, and bolstered by the compelling dynamic between Affleck and Bernthal. Their offbeat chemistry and unexpectedly heartfelt performances elevate the material, making this sequel a surprisingly rich and rewarding character study disguised as a mainstream action movie.
There’s also one Czech connection here: The Accountant 2 features a single scene set in Prague (but not shot in the Czech capital) when a call is placed to Braxton’s handler, a Russian mafioso played by Andrew Howard. Props to whoever sourced the footage that serves as the local establishing shot, an interesting drone shot over Charles Bridge that looks better than the usual stock material (see: Alarum).
