‘The Accountant 2' Is One of the Year's Best-Reviewed Sequels. Does It Live up to the Hype?

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The Accountant 2, a long-in-gestation sequel to 2016's The Accountant, is one of the best-reviewed sequels of the year. But does it live up to the hype?The film sees Ben Affleck, playing deadly accountant Christian Wolf, reteam with original director Gavin O'Connor (Miracle, Warrior) for a continuation of Wolf's arc. Critics have been surprisingly enthusiastic about The Accountant 2. On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 76 percent critical consensus against the original's middling 53 percent. Audiences have equally embraced the film, with its international box office grosses exceeding $100 million (nearly $70 million of which came from North America). With The Accountant 2 now streaming, is the Amazon/MGM sequel really as good as everyone is saying?The Accountant concluded with Affleck's formerly meek CPA (who did time in prison for an accidental murder and then became an assassin whilst cooking the books for crime families, don't ask) gunning down a bunch of hitmen, sparing his contract killer brother (Jon Berenthal), and installing Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) as the Director of the Treasury Department in the seat vacated by Raymond King (J.K. Simmons). Phew!
The Accountant 2 picks up several years after the events of the original. O'Connor opens with a terrific hook, an impeccably choreographed, nearly dialogue-free sequence in which King is tracked down and assassinated in the middle of a Los Angeles nightclub whilst trying to recruit assassin Anaïs (Daniella Pineda) to recover a kidnapped child. Medina is brought to identify his body and finds an ominous message—'Find the Accountant'—scrawled on King's arm. That leads her to Wolf, who agrees to help Medina find the missing boy on the condition that they bring his brother, Braxton, into the mix.If you can't already tell, the contrivances pile up fast and furious in The Accountant 2. The movie is tonally all over the place, veering from mass child murders to dating-game comedy skits to Face/Off style revelations, sometimes within the same scene. There's also a most unexpected journey into X-Men territory come the third act, and a chase scene in which Affleck, on a motorcycle, seems to morph back into Batman. But because the movie wears its outlandishness with such confidence, all of it works better than it should. The Accountant 2 is nothing if not unwieldy (frankly, it's bizarre), but it knows what it is and embraces itself. There's even a bit of genuine emotion in how the day is saved, however predictably, come the end.
The Accountant, which was a fine programmer in its own right, called back to low-key action movies of the early aughts, which boiled down to men solving problems with their guns, both rifles and muscles. The Accountant 2 offers the same solution for life's woes, but this time filtered through an action/buddy-cop formula that recalls straight-to-video shoot 'em ups of the late '80s and early '90s. It's an interesting about-face for the franchise, one which inherently allows everyone to loosen up and have a bit more fun.You can tell the filmmakers are particularly enthralled with Bernthal—he essentially gets three introductory scenes, all of which pay off with a fairly clever punchline. He and Affleck are quite good together, finding an odd-couple rhythm which the first movie lacked. Addai-Robinson, as the buttoned-up fed, essentially steals the movie with a sharp straight-man performance. The unexpected third wheel in this sibling reunion, she brings a warmth and wit that's typically missing from this sort of character and grounds the movie even when it threatens to spin out of control.O'Connor proves himself a much more adept director of action and schlock than he managed on the first installment, which often toppled into self-seriousness. Here, he deftly toggles between neo-noir tropes and building a proper mystery while still indulging in a level of off-the-wall chaos that will please genre fans. The final action sequence, an extended homage to Dirty Harry, is well-staged and rooted in logical stakes. It's a refreshing antidote to the world-saving bravado of most modern blockbusters, a callback to a nearly forgotten era of action filmmaking. Believe the hype: The Accountant 2 is one of this year's best, and weirdest, sequels.'The Accountant 2' Is One of the Year's Best-Reviewed Sequels. Does It Live up to the Hype? first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 5, 2025