Hollywood has yet to find a decent-to-exceptionally successful film that they can’t spin into an unexpected, full-fledged franchise. So when Gavin O’Connor’s disappointing, Ben Affleck-led actioner “The Accountant” managed to triple its $44 million budget back in 2016, the notion of a film awkwardly titled “The Accountant 2” wasn’t as much of a surprise as the fact that it took them nine years to finally get around to it.
But get around to it they did, and unlike most long-belated sequels, “The Accountant 2” can boast the return of most of the players who came to play for the first round—a good sign for any sequel looking to live up to the standards that made its predecessor a success… even if those standards mostly added up to a whiff. Indeed, for O’Connor and co., the answer to matching the first film’s success is to go big or go home; unlike most sequels, however, in this case, bigger does in fact mean better.
Well, it all depends on which numbers are actually being reinvested, for while Warner Bros. and franchise newcomers MGM certainly up the game in every regard—story, central subjects, a doubled budget (still chump-change in an age where the mid-range thriller is facing outright extinction)—some of those enhancements prove more beneficial to this overall spreadsheet than others.
Once again, Affleck returns as Christian Wolff, the autistic genius with mob ties and the ability to crunch numbers and bones alike. When the former Treasury Department head, once on his tail (J.K. Simmons), dies under mysterious circumstances, Wolff’s presence is requested by the officer’s former pupil and now-leading officer, Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), to help unravel the mystery that Simmons’s Raymond King had begun to investigate.
As Medina and Wolff begin to untangle what turns out to be an incredibly complex and hazy search for a missing El Salvadorian family, they realize they may not be able to solve everything alone, nor by the book. Enter Christian’s estranged brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal), who takes a reluctant break from his contract killings to assist his brother and add some much-needed swagger to the proceedings.
From the word “go,” “The Accountant 2” shows itself to be a delightfully convoluted puzzle the likes of which Wolff would be more than happy to piece together—and piece it together he does. But when I say delightfully, I don’t mean in the sense that it’s a delight for the audience so much as the film is fairly delighted with itself. Bill Dubuque’s script (the same writer as the first film, alongside his work as the co-creator of the similarly money laundering-themed series “Ozark”) follows much of the blueprint of its antecedent, in that there’s simply far too much going on here simply for the sake of contriving an excuse for Affleck to kick some ass and misinterpret sarcasm.
If Wolff delights in uncooking dirty ledgers and complicated accounts, then he’d be just as delighted to uncook this plot; the best summation you might get is that, by the end, Dubuque manages to steer “The Accountant 2” into something resembling a watchable version of “Sound of Freedom.” Surprisingly, though, with just over two hours of hefty plotting, O’Connor never lets the film lose its steam, mostly because of the most fruitful investment on which he’s chosen to double down.
You can find years’ worth of internet complaining (mostly by yours truly) about how Jon Bernthal has essentially become the poster child for being completely mishandled and under-utilized in cinema; one need only look back two weeks to “The Amateur” for an appearance from Two-Scene Jon. “The Accountant 2,” on the other hand, brings Bernthal front-and-center, and O’Connor’s penchant for examining brotherly friction (see: “Warrior,” probably still the director’s greatest achievement) pays absolute dividends when the laidback supporting player is finally given a chance to go toe-to-toe with a stoically chiseled Affleck. (One specific freeze-frame may go down as the most satisfying and hilarious use of the technique in all of 2025.)
In this brotherly friction, O’Connor finds a genuine route to examining frayed connections that almost make the film’s reliance on dated depictions of autism—the group of child savant hackers is a bit much—more than a gimmicky character trait for the film’s leading character, but an actual route to unpacking the distance created in most fraternal bonds. Combined with the filmmaker’s focused awareness of space and body movement in the rare action scene—likely another byproduct of his past experience making sports films—“The Accountant 2” sails right past the disappointment that came with his first attempt at embellishing these receipts. Then again, maybe that’s the case because this time, we all know (Gavin O’Connor included) what to expect, and which figures might be worth a second look.
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