Aside from Ben Affleck’s own accountant, does anyone retain fond memories, or memories at all, about the 2016 action thriller The Accountant?
A mid-concept thriller from director Gavin O’Connor (veteran of such tough-guy cinema as Pride and Glory and Warrior), the original Accountant followed the title character – an autistic math-wiz named Christian who has a knack with both calculators and Colts – as he handled the books for all manner of criminal cartels. A fine-enough showcase for Affleck in ultra-dry action-hero mode, the movie drifted in and out of the culture like any other tax season: as unnecessarily complicated as it was unmemorable.
Yet O’Connor – perhaps because he has the IRS on his case and needs the cash, or maybe because studios these days simply don’t like any film without a number in their title denoting audience familiarity – has not been able to let his presumed dream of a CPACU (Chartered Professional Accountant Cinema Universe) die, leading to this nearly decade-later sequel. At least it’s often far more pleasant than an audit.
Abandoning the dark and self-serious tone of the first movie, The Accountant 2 (stylized as The Accountant² during its on-screen credits, but nowhere in its marketing materials; a certain level of math must have been deemed by studio Amazon MGM as simply being too elitist) has been repositioned as a buddy-cop action-comedy. More of a supporting player in the first film, actor Jon Bernthal gets full co-star billing here alongside Affleck, the two playing odd-couple brothers – Christian is the straight-ahead money launderer, Bernthal’s Braxton is the hot-headed mercenary – saddled with solving the murder of an old colleague.
The details of the film’s deeply ludicrous plot don’t matter for a second – there is a third-act twist that makes zero narrative, emotional or existential sense – so long as Christian and Braxton get to enjoy some quality time shooting up anonymous cartel henchmen and line-dancing inside L.A.’s honkiest of honky-tonks. (Affleck’s smooth country-music moves are so impressive that he could certainly deduct any lessons that he might’ve taken – hope he kept the receipts!)
While the sequel is worse off for the absence of original costars Anna Kendrick, John Lithgow, Jeffrey Tambor and Jean Smart – returning player Cynthia Addai-Robinson, once again fumbling around as a junior U.S. Treasury agent, simply does not have the verve to enliven her lazily sketched sidekick – the easy back-and-forth chemistry between Affleck and Bernthal as they paint the town blood-red provides certain dividends. What is it that they say? No pain, no capital gains?
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