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The Accountant seemed to have fun on accident. Its made-for-cable plotting and goofy premise—a neurodivergent boy who self-actualizes into a tic-driven action hero by becoming the go-to accountant for gang members, cartels, and other high-profile criminals to fact-check their own finances—resulted in a junky cinematic snack posing as a meat-and-potatoes thriller meal. Gavin O’Connor’s original ausploitation (autism, not Australia) film was deeply stupid, but charming in its own misguided way, because its ridiculous concept hit the jackpot with a committed central performance from Ben Affleck. Affleck’s tight-lipped turn as Christian Wolff was equally hulking and comic, a deadpan guy specializing in making guys dead. After that surprising success, The Accountant 2 leaves its deductions behind to invest in both its socially awkward humor and its hyper-militarized action, with depreciating returns. The sequel sticks Affleck and Jon Bernthal in a sitcom episode surrounded by a Sound Of Freedom-style macho fantasy—call it Gun Sheldon. It’s a terrible combination that buries the rapport of its leads in chaotic action, troubling worldviews, and increasingly generic plotting.
Gone are the simpler times when Christian Wolff would do some farmer couple’s taxes in between amortizing someone’s mortality. Premises and professions are for first movies; sequels are for explosions and assault rifles. The more specific details around Christian’s life that integrated his cognitive differences into both his surface-level profession and his work in the shadows have dissipated. Instead, The Accountant 2 doubles down on its dual convictions. One, that watching someone with autism talk to someone without autism is inherently funny, and two, that nobody should mock autism because autism allows you to be the most laudable thing an American blockbuster can imagine: a supersoldier.
Really, The Accountant 2 dreams up a world where a neuroscience clinic specializing in autism is actually just a front for an Xavier School For Gifted Youngsters where, rather than care, children are damned to lives as militarized members of a surveillance state, pulling off incredible feats of Movie Hacking and operating drones in order to facilitate extrajudicial killings. The first film’s trailer—in which a father of an autistic boy asks “Can our son lead a normal life?” and is met with the reply “Define normal” as Christian breaks fools’ bones—has had its warped ideas honed to a deadly edge. Neurodivergent people may not be able to make it in the “real” world, but they can certainly kill bad guys real good here in action movie land. This is to say that the film does not handle the many facets of neurodiversity delicately.
Even the best parts of the film, the buddy comedy (a genre which both The Accountant 2 and returning filmmaker O’Connor clearly yearn to inhabit more fully), rely on perpetual literal-minded punchline Christian undercutting his swaggering brother Braxton (Bernthal). This simple odd-couple dynamic encourages Affleck to be even more restrained and mannered than in the first film, and Bernthal to chew up all of Affleck’s scenic leftovers. But for every amusing single-joke square-dancing or speed-dating scene where Christian is a fish out of water, there are a dozen plodding plot points dragging the brothers around the world.
They’re out, initially at least, to solve the murder of ex-Treasury Director Raymond King (J.K. Simmons). Now a private investigator, Raymond’s immediately gunned down in vague connection to a human trafficking ring, and his final act is to scrawl “find the accountant” on his arm. The Accountant is the only one who can…avenge his death? Finish the investigation he was in the middle of? Fail to use his accounting skills for anything other than a party trick? The plot is a mess, the mystery is mud, and every moment where it’s not just Brax and Christian busting balls is excruciatingly confused. As the brothers Wolff link up with Simmons’ straitlaced heir apparent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) and chase after a mysterious assassin (Daniella Pineda, involved in one of the more ludicrous moments of this out-there narrative), it’s easy to forget what this movie is a sequel to as one’s eyes glaze over.
The Accountant 2 has all but discarded its basic premise and just wants to shoot as many people in the head as possible. Screenwriter Bill Dubuque now cares little for goofy logic puzzles or secrets squirreled away in tax documents or childhood trauma meted out over endless flashbacks; he wants an action franchise, damn it, and human traffickers are the flavor of the week. So, Christian drives his big camper o’ weapons across a national border without a care (or customs inspection) in the world, seeking choppy gunfights in a right-winger’s dusty idea of Mexico. That the film only seems to care about the situation because one of the trafficking victims is a child Christian assumes is autistic only further cheapens the dime-store story.
Though the scenes between Affleck and Bernthal reveal the kind of film The Accountant 2 would like to be, a meatheaded pallin’ around kind of actioner in the vein of Den Of Thieves, that himbo subgenre requires personality and audience goodwill. Jettisoning its personality in favor of bloated run-and-gun anonymity, and squandering its goodwill on laughable-to-genuinely-offensive takes on autism and trafficking, all that’s left in The Accountant 2 is mean-spirited, badly shot schlock. This sequel is an imbalanced balance sheet in serious need of reconciliation.
Director: Gavin O’Connor
Writer: Bill Dubuque
Starring: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Daniella Pineda, Allison Robertson, J. K. Simmons
Release Date: April 25, 2025
