The Accountant 2: Affleck with Autistic Powers is Back, with Modest Return on Investment
By John Kirk
Rating: B
What's the accumulated interest in a sequel like The Accountant 2 that took more than eight years to make? Apparently enough to justify the costs.
And one must ask, as with all sequels, is it better or worse than the first one?
In this ledger, the debits and credits actually cancel each other. This means, in non-accounting terms: meh.
In The Accountant 2, eight years have passed and the title character, Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), has reaped the rewards of his career. He lives a nomadic life in his Airstream camper, still providing his services for shady clients. When his old FBI acquaintance, Ray King (J.K. Simmons) is murdered, he leaves a message to “find the Accountant.”
Jon Bernthal and Ben Affleck engage in a typical accounting procedure.
King’s successor, Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) brings Chris in to help solve his murder and uncover a criminal conspiracy. Chris, in turn, enlists the help of his estranged brother, contract hitman, Braxton (Jon Bernthal).
If you know the first film, Christian is an autistic accountant who maintains a small accounting firm to provide cover for his other, illicit activities. We saw snippets of his unique brand of autism – a.k.a. Advanced Savant Syndrome - that allowed him to solve puzzles, find missing information and create off-shore tax havens for criminal millionaires. Yet his skill with weapons, and hand-to-hand combat are a result of his military father who forced his son to deal with his condition through the harshest of means.
But Wolff’s abilities received a minimum of explanation in the first film, which demanded a greater suspension of disbelief. The lack of background made it easier for the audience to accept that Wolfe was not just capable of his accounting savantism but also his super-soldier abilities too.
The same for his autism. Affleck manifests this through social awkwardness, lack of eye-contact, his anger when he is not allowed to complete a puzzle, and even the self-treatment he would use to inhibit his autistic tendencies in order to function in the real world. However, again, this is a pale representation of how autistic perception is managed and is window dressing.
This is one of the two major differences in this sequel. In the first film, less was more. The least amount of explanation made it easier to accept the story. In The Accountant 2, there is an attempt to not just explain Wolfe’s autism, but the autism of another contract killer named Anais (Daniella Pineda).
Anais was originally contacted by Ray King, and her role in this story is part of the mystery they must solve. But her origin story places her on the same location on the autism spectrum as Christian, as are the children at his former school (the beneficiary of a vast amount of his fortune) which serves as the hub of his intelligence network.
These children all have the same Acquired Savant Syndrome and actually function as his own personal intelligence operatives, hacking computer systems left, right and center. For a rare condition, it seems pretty popular and useful.
However, don’t get me wrong. The idea of this school functioning like some sort of “bat-cave” (sorry, wrong franchise) adds an element of fun.
The second difference is an increase in humour. Awkward humour was well-placed but sparse in the first film. It highlighted one of Wolff’s weaknesses: his inability to properly understand people around him. A discomforted joke in the first film was actually made funnier by Affleck’s perplexed silence. In the sequel, there’s a heavier reliance on humour, which accounts for most of the interaction between Wolff, his brother Braxton and Medina. Sometimes it’s enjoyable if a little clumsy.
There’s even fun in watching Christian and Braxton interact with each other in a classic sibling team-up. But while it was a more serious relationship in the first film, in the sequel, it’s relaxed, funny, even supportive..
The Accountant 2 sees Christian in more of a super-hero role, solving murders, figuring out criminal enterprises and skirting the law in a dispassionate, autistic manner, placing the ends above the means.
It’s predictable but entertaining. Unrealistic, but it doesn’t affect the story too much. The relationship between Braxton and Christian has changed from the first film, but it’s a welcome, feel-good change in a story with lots of guns and an epic battle. Oh, and we even get to figure out who Anais is. Can you say Accountant 3,?
In the end, The Accountant 2 isn’t any better or worse than its predecessor.
I guess you could say it all balances out.
The Accountant 2. Directed by Gavin O’Connor. Starring Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Daniella Pineda, Allison Robertson and J.K. Simmons. Opens in theatres Friday, April 25.