AUSTIN – There are few films you’ll ever see that have an identity crisis as comprehensive and disappointingly self-sabotaging as “The Accountant 2” (or, if you prefer, “The Accountant2” as the well-edited though woefully misleading trailer cheekily shifts it to being). On the one hand, it desperately wants to be a darker buddy comedy movie between two bickering brothers, played by the returning duo of Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal, as they try to reconnect with each other and as they drive around cracking skulls of thinly sketched baddies.
On the other, it wants to be a tense thriller with a twisty plot built around deception, memory loss, and the search for a missing child. Unfortunately, it’s the second film that holds back the already so-so fun of the first from ever taking hold, saddling it with a story that is mostly just boring. The longer it takes you through what is only ever a laborious thriller that’s light on kinetic action sequences, earned intrigue, or anything approaching genuine emotion, the more bafflingly banal it becomes. While the first “The Accountant” was nothing special, this sequel is a complete and utter misfire that will leave even those who liked the original disappointed by whatever is being gone for here.
This is unfortunate as the film starts with an effectively stressful opening scene with J.K. Simmons briefly popping up as Ray, the now-retired federal agent who is taking on cases in which he only has a personal interest. Don’t worry if you can’t remember him or what significance he had in the first film, as his appearance is merely to get the actor’s name on the poster and set the story in motion. The basics of this involve Ray having a meeting with the mysterious Anaïs (Daniella Pineda), which we only get to hear the initial details of (it surrounds a photo of a missing family) before everything goes sideways, and a group of armed men comes in to break it up.
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This ends with Ray dead and the message written on his arm to “find the accountant.” We then cut to Boise, Idaho (a lovely little city that is frequently made the punchline in not just films like this, but also the similarly named “The Counselor”) where the titular fugitive accountant Christian (Affleck) is preparing to go speed dating. Of course, being him (he is autistic and has what the film refers to as “acquired savant syndrome” at multiple points), he has gamed the system and figured out how to craft the perfect profile based on data. The only problem is that the initially smitten women he talks with soon have a hard time connecting with him, all of which is played for laughs in a way that will only grow increasingly tiresome the more it keeps returning to the well on this.
Christian’s quiet life is disrupted when agent Marybeth (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) reaches out following the death of Ray so he can help her get to the bottom of what he is looking into. Knowing he’ll also need assistance, Christian then brings his hitman brother Braxton (Bernthal) into the fold as well. This is all well and good, though, in addition to taking far too long to actually get everything in motion, the film almost immediately goes off a cliff as it gets caught up in the creaky mechanics of the case.
It’s clear the film felt it needed to have some narrative to build around, but said case is so broadly sketched it sucks all of the oxygen out of the film and leaves it feeling lifeless, with little to grab you from scene to scene. There are quips exchanged between Braxton and Christian, though the film will frequently cut away from them entirely to scenes that feel like they’re there solely to provide exposition. It grinds what was already a slog of a film to a halt every time. Even as the puzzle comes together piece by piece, there is no thrill to the journey it takes to get there.
One hesitates even to call it an action film save for a climactic shootout that feels obligatory more than it does exciting or well-staged; there aren’t any moments of creative fights we get to sit with for more than a few seconds. Much of this is by design, as the film seems to want to be just about the relationship between the two brothers and is at its best when it leans into this, but it also can’t get out of its own way either. There is a winning buddy comedy deep inside “The Accountant 2,” but it’s buried under so much tedious meandering that it never gets to fully see the light of day. [D+]
“The Accountant 2” had its World Premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival. It will be released in theaters starting April 25 via MGM.
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