Not since Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid have I enjoyed a buddy film as much as I have Accountant 2. In this fraternal buddy comedy, Ben Affleck’s autistic action savant Christian is joined by his manic, sociopathic brother, Braxton (Jonathan Bernal), to make life miserable for hoods who feed on undocumented immigrants..
Because poor families are involved, the heat is off the accountant and becomes an exercise in setting right the current film obsession with trafficking. When Affleck’s Christian, played with slightly more expression than Affleck has shown before, is exploring answers to the disappearances, the effect is rousing as the character seems to represent on the one hand almost a super hero and on the other distanced from the mobs he is used to helping with his mathematical genius.
Yet no denying while the range of the character is more than Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man, it still is limited by his obsession with the objective. Add to the sometimes-confusing plot the autism angle, and you have a pleasant pot of plot that challenges but reminds the aud we’re almost in summer, when logic doesn’t dominate. Even his home, a PanAmerican Airstream RV, begins to make sense as limited like his social skills.
When the brothers unite after years of estrangement, the thriller serves up low-key wit and reconciliation slow in coming. Yet when they take care of business with the bad boys, they work together as if they had been practicing self-defense for the years of their estrangement. When we see Christian line dancing, we know we have gone a long way from the original stoic Accountant.
When we meet the students at the high-brow Harbor Neuroscience Academy, we know director Gavin O’Connor and writer Bill Dubuque have enhanced the original in creative and dynamic ways that force Christian into new social interaction.
Accountant 2 is larded with humor and punctuated with action, a fine preparation for the coming summer season and a reminder that Affleck as producer and star can go nose to nose with John Wick and Jason Statham only with more stress on the intellectual and less on the physical.
The Accountant 2 is a good enough sequel to make us anticipate #3, like suddenly realizing a tax return has value especially when your accountant is a savant.
The Accountant 2
Director: Gavin O’Connor (The Accountant)
Screenplay: Bill Dubuque (The Accountant)
Cast: Ben Affleck (The Accountant), Jon Bernthal (The Accountant)
Rating: R
Length: 2h 12m
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com