The Accountant 2 Review: The Franchise Gets Bigger & Sillier But Doesn't Lose Its Heart

Spoilers for the ending of an 8-year-old movie, but when 2016's "The Accountant" came to a close, it did so with a surprising and cathartic fight between two men: Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), an accountant for a variety of criminal organizations, and Braxton (Jon Bernthal), a mercenary hired to protect the film's villain — unaware until the climax that he was actually fighting his own long-lost brother. (If viewers were given a nickel every time a Gavin O'Connor film ended with two estranged siblings beating the snot out of each other while melodramatic music swelled on the soundtrack, their other nickel would come from 2011's "Warrior," and that's an odd way to make 10 cents.)

The original film was a modest box office success, but in the ensuing decade, it's grown in audience estimation through streaming (and even got a second life on Netflix). Those folks clamoring for a sequel all seemed in agreement that any further adventures of Affleck as The Accountant Who Is Super Good at Math and Violence must feature more of Bernthal as his entertaining and charming brother. 

Original screenwriter Bill Dubuque and director O'Connor have obliged, as "The Accountant 2" has transformed from a procedural puzzler about one enigmatic figure solving mysteries in Microsoft Excel and dry erase board equations into a buddy movie about two brothers who were once inseparable and now struggle to carry on a conversation. O'Connor himself has referred to it as "Rain Man" on steroids, and he's not entirely wrong. It's at once a fun and crowd-pleasing picture in that classic's vein as well as an extrapolation of what worked so well in the last outing. 

Some may balk at tinkering with a formula that works in lieu of a different approach that might not. A big part of the allure of "The Accountant" is that it took a neo-noir, crime-fiction premise and ran it through a superhero movie ringer. Ben Affleck's Christian, an accountant who goes by a variety of nom de plumes inspired by famous mathematicians, is at times indistinguishable from Affleck's take on Daredevil 20 years ago. Only instead of his blindness giving him radar sense, here it's Christian's autism that is presented its own kind of superpower. At a time when the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services is prone to referring to autism as an injury, one can understand the merit of an action thriller that highlights, however cartoonishly, that neurodivergence is not a curse or an albatross around those diagnosed with it. 

It's been eight years since their chance encounter in the climax of an elaborate shoot out. Christian and Braxton have never had a meet up to reconnect like they bloodily promised one another. But the director of Treasury, Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), has a new case with a personal investment that necessitates Christian's help — and it gets gnarly enough that he thinks to ask Braxton to assist. Marybeth is once again operating in that extralegal space, this time to catch a killer. Only she finds it a lot more difficult to accept their help when it's up close and personal. Tips filtered through Christian's helper Justine (Allison Robertson) are one thing, but being a personal witness to Christian breaking arms or Braxton kidnapping witnesses puts her at a crossroads.

Marybeth's resistance at being Christian's Commissioner Gordon is a sideshow compared to the borderline goofy ways Christian's operation has expanded. It's pretty hard to care about Marybeth's moral dilemmas about violating civil liberties when she's getting super hacker assistance from Justine and her students at Harbor Neuroscience, where Christian's many donations have apparently been invested in turning their youth into a miniature NSA. Quite frankly, as interesting as the missing killer case is (and its tethers to international human trafficking and a mysterious assassin Braxton may or may not know who has developed savant-like combat expertise from physical trauma), the thrust of the film is focused on the next-level chemistry between Affleck and Jon Bernthal.

"The Accountant" was far from subtle, but its focus on Christian as a loner with a peculiar lifestyle and a very specific condition worked so well because Ben Affleck, even in a film with its own ridiculous side, delivered a performance that was nuanced and earnest. It never stooped to parody in its depiction of neurodivergence, even if the applications of his strengths as, well, a badass, martial arts-trained, marksman accountant stopped just short of absurdity. Christian is still not a joke, but by focusing on his relationship with his brother, both Affleck and Jon Bernthal match the film's script in trending their line readings and delivery more broadly in the direction of comedy. 

What that means is that even with the shoot-outs and visceral bits of hand-to-hand combat, it's the quieter moments that exist outside the larger plot that hit the hardest. Sure, seeing the brothers taking on the bad guys in Juarez for a full-on war zone set piece proves thrilling and entertaining. But it doesn't hit the sweet spot like seeing Braxton's glee at Christian using his pattern recognition skills to master line dancing while the two are unwinding at a honkey-tonk bar. Braxton turning to a table of strangers to proudly exclaim "That's my brother" will land with every audience. Not just because it's funny — but because it feels honest and believable as the way they begin to mend their fractured relationship. "The Accountant 2" is larger than life and a goofier proposition than the last film, but it's such a lovable and rollicking time that a third chapter can't be too far behind.

"The Accountant 2" hits theaters on April 25.