Action, intrigue, line-dancing – The Accountant 2 has it all

Sydney Morning Herald

23-04-2025

THE ACCOUNTANT 2
★★½
MA, 133 minutes, in cinemas
As viewers of Gavin O'Connor's 2016 The Accountant will recall, Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is much more than a guy who can help you with your taxes. He can perform complex mathematical calculations in an instant, his pattern recognition skills are off the charts, and he knows just how to dislocate someone's shoulder to cause them maximum agony.
The official explanation for Christian's gifts is that he's an autistic savant, although O'Connor and screenwriter Bill Dubuque, who have both reunited with Affleck for this second outing, have no intention of painting a realistic picture of autism or anything else.
In practice, Christian is the sort of fantasy figure we're used to seeing in superhero movies, who struggles to fit into everyday life but can be counted on for assistance when all else fails.
Which doesn't mean he's straightforwardly a good guy. Not what you'd call a team player, he made his living in the first film cooking the books for criminal organisations from around the world, which still appears to be the status quo in part two.
Personally, he's a lonesome sort, operating out of a silver mobile home like Superman's Fortress of Solitude, with no friends or even close professional associates beyond the anonymous British lady who gives him instructions over the phone, addressing him as 'dreamboat'.
He does, however, have a brother: a roguish globetrotting assassin named Braxton, played by Jon Bernthal, whose role has been beefed up to compensate for the absence of Anna Kendrick, whose performance as an easily flustered fellow accountant supplied many of the first film's comic highlights.