The Accoun­tant 2 review – tonal­ly wild and uneven but odd­ly sweet

When it released in 2016, Gavin O’Connor’s The Accoun­tant was an unex­pect­ed hit for Warn­er Bros, mak­ing a slick $155 mil­lion return on a $44 mil­lion bud­get, despite a ropey crit­i­cal recep­tion. A sequel was float­ed as ear­ly as the fol­low­ing sum­mer, but it’s tak­en almost a decade to mate­ri­alise, with O’Connor return­ing along­side writer Bill Dubuque and stars Ben Affleck, Jon Bern­thal, Cyn­thia Addai-Robin­son and JK Sim­mons (briefly, any­way). It’s not clear why exact­ly O’Connor and Affleck thought there was a need for a sequel giv­en the fair­ly neat con­clu­sion of the first film, but if there’s one thing Hol­ly­wood can’t resist, it’s turn­ing a suc­cess­ful stand­alone film into a franchise.

So we return to the hyper vio­lent world of autis­tic savant Chris­t­ian Wolff, who has been trav­el­ling the USA in his Airstream since the events of the first film eight years pre­vi­ous, still tak­ing on con­tract work for the crim­i­nal under­world. He’s called upon by Mary­beth Med­i­na (Cyn­thia Addai-Robin­son), who has tak­en over from Ray King (JK Sim­mons) as Direc­tor of the Trea­sury Department’s Fin­CEN – Finan­cial Crimes Enforce­ment Net­work – fol­low­ing his retire­ment. King is now work­ing as a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, bring­ing him into direct con­flict with anoth­er high-fly­ing assas­sin named Anaïs (Daniel­la Pine­da). After King is mur­dered in strange cir­cum­stances, he directs Med­i­na to ​‘Find the Accoun­tant’, which sets her on Wolff’s trail.

Wolff, mean­while, is try­ing his hand at speed dat­ing (laffs abounds!) and still search­ing for human con­nec­tion, com­pli­cat­ed by his autism (rather than, y’know, the fact he kills peo­ple for a liv­ing). Work­ing with Med­i­na brings him back into con­tact with his estranged lit­tle broth­er Brax­ton (Jon Bern­thal), also an assas­sin, who is under­stand­ably pissed at Chris­t­ian for fail­ing to keep in touch with him for the past eight years. The reunion of the Wolff broth­ers is the best thing about The Accoun­tant 2: Affleck and Bern­thal were born to play bick­er­ing sib­lings, a dys­func­tion­al dou­ble act who love each oth­er despite the fric­tion in their fam­i­ly from a child­hood com­pli­cat­ed by their absent moth­er and insane super sol­dier father. Yet the ramped-up comedic ele­ments of the film feel tonal­ly mis­matched with its grim­dark, hyper vio­lent action-thriller ele­ments, which see the Wolff broth­ers and Anaïs dis­patch­ing var­i­ous goons in bloody fash­ion. As charm­ing as it is see­ing Affleck’s awk­ward assas­sin find a tal­ent for line danc­ing or Bernthal’s abra­sive Brax­ton dis­cov­er he loves cats, there’s a real dis­con­nect between these moments and the over­ar­ch­ing plot, which is about, uh, human trafficking.

The film’s much-dis­cussed por­tray­al of autism is also uneven. While Affleck’s low-key per­for­mance con­trasts nice­ly from Bernthal’s more volatile one and it’s refresh­ing to see an autis­tic char­ac­ter in a big-bud­get film grap­pling with their emo­tions and expe­ri­enc­ing moments of joy and love, The Accoun­tant 2, like its pre­de­ces­sor, hems towards clichés and por­tray­ing autis­tic peo­ple as ​“weird genius­es”, a trope that was pop­u­larised with Rain Man, and the posi­tion­ing of the in-uni­verse Har­bor Neu­ro­science insti­tute as some sort of school for neu­ro­di­ver­gent savants has more in com­mon with X‑Men than real­i­ty. There’s also a bizarre sug­ges­tion that Chris­t­ian can some­how ​‘sense’ some­one he’s nev­er met is autis­tic, which push­es Chris­t­ian more towards super­hero ter­ri­to­ry than real­is­tic real­i­sa­tion of autism on screen. (Yet I must remark that as a per­son await­ing an autism diag­no­sis with two autis­tic sib­lings, the fraught rela­tion­ship and con­stant bick­er­ing between Chris­t­ian and Brax­ton rings true, minus the whole assas­sin thing.)

Ulti­mate­ly the mash-up of gen­res doesn’t quite come togeth­er in a sat­is­fac­to­ry man­ner, clash­ing to the point of whiplash, and attempts to incor­po­rate Acquired Savant Syn­drome into the plot feel bor­der­line pre­pos­ter­ous. With a third Accoun­tant instal­ment in the works, O’Connor and Dubuque would do well to focus on the best part of the world they’ve con­struct­ed: the rela­tion­ship between Chris­t­ian and Brax­ton, two fucked up mid­dle-aged broth­ers (whom both appear neu­ro­di­ver­gent even if Brax­ton doesn’t have a diag­no­sis) try­ing to make sense of the world around them and how they relate to one anoth­er in the face of con­sid­er­able child­hood trauma.

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