Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal are The Accountant 2‘s best assets, according to the first reactions to the nearly decade-later sequel. In 2016’s The Accountant, the titular CPA — book-cooking forensic accountant and math savant Christian Wolff (Affleck) — clashed with a hitman and private security contractor who turned out to be his brother, Brax (Bernthal). Meanwhile, the Treasury Department’s soon-retiring Financial Crimes Deputy Director Ray King (J.K. Simmons) tasked/blackmailed Agent Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) into tracking down the identity of the mystery man known only to his criminal clientele as “The Accountant.”
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The Gavin O’Connor-directed sequel reunites Affleck and Bernthal as estranged brothers Christian and Brax, who join forces to help Agent Medina solve a new mystery: who killed Ray King? Because the mobster bookkeeper-learned Christian has no short list of clients — drug cartels, arms brokers, money launderers, and assassins among them — the trio’s investigation into King’s murder draws the attention of some of the most ruthless killers in the world.
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So, is The Accountant 2 worth the investment of a movie ticket, or are critics writing it off? Based on the first reviews out of the film’s SXSW premiere on Sunday, it sounds like the action-thriller is an improvement over the 2016 original (which received a 53% “rotten” on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes). See excerpts of the first reviews from SXSW:
Deadline: “Although sequels rarely surpass the original, Gavin O’Connor’s long-gestating The Accountant 2 is a pleasant surprise … The follow-up stands perfectly on its own while delving further into the dynamics that felt halfheartedly introduced the first time around. Affleck and Bernthal hit the perfect comedic chemistry as estranged brothers who still know how to push each other’s buttons, somewhat of a missed opportunity in the original, which barely had the pair sharing the screen until a wholly dramatic conclusion.”
The Hollywood Reporter: “Whereas The Accountant made well-intentioned but clumsy attempts to explore the life of a high-functioning autistic man, The Accountant 2 focuses on the relationship between Christian and his brother Brax, two characters fans have come to love. This is a fraternal buddy comedy dressed up as an intricate (read: convoluted), nail-biting thriller. Bernthal and Affleck reprise their roles as the estranged siblings whose traumatic childhood somehow led them into adjacent lines of business. Their performances embrace O’Connor’s comic direction without losing the narrative’s emotional core, and the pair’s chemistry strengthens The Accountant 2 by distracting us from the implausible details of its overly complex central mystery.”
Variety: “To me, this franchise had nowhere to go but up. And that, I’m pleased to say, is exactly what happened. The Accountant 2 is an agreeably loopy hyperviolent good time … There’s no way that they were going to make an “Accountant” movie without Braxton, Christian’s brother, who’s like his more reckless counterpart. He’s not autistic, but Jon Bernthal, with that leer of arrogance, his hair standing up thick and high enough to make him seem like Affleck’s bad-seed twin, plays Braxton as if he could be on the spectrum. These two become a dark-side comedy team: the Sociopath and the Numbers Cruncher.”
/Film: “O’Connor and Affleck, despite first tackling the concept nearly a decade ago, didn’t skip a beat with this reunion. After seeing the film’s world premiere at SXSW, to my eye this is a funnier, more confidently directed, wholly entertaining sequel that is surprisingly not devoid of heart. It improves on its predecessor in every way.”
The Guardian: “Affleck still plays Chris as a slightly more socially awkward version of an unflappable movie assassin; Bernthal, who played Braxton in the first movie with a sort of impenetrable worldly panache, goes fully off the chain, chewing every scene as a hitman of supreme confidence and desperate vulnerability who cannot sit still. Not exactly continuous, but highly watchable. Together, the pair carry what could and nearly does devolve into an illegible pursuit of indecipherable crime under a hail of gunfire.”
IndieWire: “If there’s one thing The Accountant 2 deserves credit for, it’s figuring out that an autistic Ben Affleck is simply not enough to carry an action movie on his own. Christian Wolff might actually be one of Affleck’s better acting jobs in recent years, but he works far better as a foil than a leading man. Bernthal shows up with buckets of charm to share the heavy lifting, making Affleck’s accountant seem more sympathetic and competent by comparison. And with the two men enjoying equal time in the spotlight, the film’s moments of levity seem more like brotherly razzing than cruel jabs at a disabled man.”
The Accountant 2 — starring Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Robert Morgan, Daniella Pineda, Allison Robertson, and J.K. Simmons — is in theaters April 25.
