Movie Review: 'The Accountant 2' is Pretty Good.

The Accountant 2

Directed by Gavin O’Connor

Written by Bill Dubuque

Starring Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, J.K Simmons, Cynthia Addai Robinson

Release Date April 25th, 2025

Published April 25th, 2025

The Accountant 2 returns Ben Affleck to his 2016 persona, Christian Wolff, a.k.a, The Accountant, a math savant and mass murdering killer for hire. But don’t worry, he only kills bad guys. And, the money he gets from gun runners and drug lords? That goes to fund autism research and a secret team of autistic kids who act as hackers to help Christian get the bad guys. If this sounds vaguely offensive, perhaps it is. I’m not autistic myself, I won’t deign to be offended on their behalf. I guess if you are going to have a stereotype, it might as well be one where you have a super-powered brain.

Anyway, in The Accountant 2, we find Christian Wolff living in Boise, Idaho but instead of finding him working on an accounting problem, Chris is hacking a dating algorithm. It’s a humorous scene where a series of women get excited by the handsome face of Ben Affleck and are completely off put but his lack of social skills and blunt responses to playful questions. Christian may be able to hack the algorithm, but he still can’t make women like him as a person. This scene lingers a bit too long and while it adds a layer of longing to Christian Wolff, it’s a distraction from getting to the reason why we are here to see The Accountant 2.

If you are excited for The Accountant 2, you're eager to see Ben Affleck shooting bad guys and we do get plenty of that, eventually. After the murder of Ray King (J.K Simmons), Christian is out for revenge which leads him to a human trafficking ring where a group of children are being held in a decrepit, desert prison. One of the young prisoners is a child Ray King was searching for on behalf of a private eye client when he was killed. Leaving behind an elaborate puzzle of evidence, Ray’s FinCen successor, Agent Medina (Cynthia Addai Robinson), must work with Christian to figure out exactly what Ray was up to.

As with The Accountant, there are other strands of plot happening. One of these follows Christian’s brother, Braxton (Jon Bernthal) who spends an inordinate amount of screen time in Germany attempting to get a dog back from a former lover. The scene is… interesting. Bernthal is charming and funny but the scene stops the movie dead for several minutes . It does help to humanize Bernthal’s brutish killer for hire character, but it could have moved a little faster to its Corgi related punchline.

In the universe of The Accountant and The Accountant 2, quirky equals funny. Thus we have Braxton and his Corgi, Christian’s speed dating scene, and one final, needlessly long but kind of fun scene where Christian learns to line dance by applying his math skills. Meanwhile, children are being held in a brutal prison and a female hitman is running around killing people related to Ray King’s investigation. Her identity is a key mystery in the plot of The Accountant 2 and Daniella Pineda is solidly cast, even as her killer origin story feels far-fetched at the very least.

This must read as if I dislike The Accountant 2 but I really don’t. Much like how I felt about the first The Accountant, in 2016, the film is fine. It’s good. It’s a solid, well crafted, action movie. It hits all the right beats, the cast is clearly enjoying themselves, and Gavin O’Connor is a strong technician who makes everything look good. The film is far from perfect, it does stop dead to introduce a lot of quirky humor but this cast is good at quirky humor, so I don’t mind that much. The autism stuff is problematic, it relies on lazy tropes and stereotypes, but I don’t feel it is my place to complain about that. It’s up to you how you feel about portraying autism as if it could turn a man into Batman and children into the world’s greatest hackers.

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