The Accountant 2

This weekend, The Accountant 2, the sequel to the 2017 film The Accountant, will be released in theaters. The Accountant 2 returns to the story of Christian Wolf when he is recruited to help solve the murder of the former treasury chief. I just watched the first film last week and liked it enough, so I wanted to give the sequel a try, hoping it would give me more of what I liked about the first film.

There are quite a few aspects that I liked about this film. Much like the first film, I like how likable Christian Wolf is. You still like him even when he is unintentionally being off-putting. The movie also has a few solid action sequences. I wouldn't call it a full-on action movie but it still has a few sequences that keep things exciting. I also found this movie to be a lot funnier than the first film. There is this whole opening sequence where Christian deconstructs the algorithm of a dating program that is funny. One of the more interesting ideas about this movie is that Christian has to work directly with the treasury agent which leads to some really interesting clashes between Christian's illegal actions and Agent Medina's wanting to do things by the book. Easily, the best part of the movie is the whole buddy-cop dynamic between Ben Affleck and John Bernthal. Whenever the two are in a scene together, the movie turns into a buddy comedy which I think is what makes the movie work. The opposite personality of the two works well and makes for some funny and also some more endearing moments.

If the movie would have been purely a buddy action comedy, I think it would have worked more. However, some aspects didn't work as well for me. Much like the first film, I found the investigation plot uninteresting and a bit convoluted. I didn't care about the missing family and whenever that part took over the story, it slowed things down quite a bit. I wish the plot would have been a bit more simplified so that more time could have been given to Ben Affleck and John Bernthal. I also felt that the movie didn't utilize Christian's skills as much. He uses them a bit towards the beginning but then gets kind of pushed to the side to make room for the missing family drama.

Overall, while I did enjoy the buddy comedy aspect of the film, I don't think the movie totally got the balance with the actual conflict right. But in the end, the charm of the two brothers outweighs the convulsion of the plot.

Score: 7.5/10 Grade: B Recommendation: Check it out if you liked the first film