The Accountant 2 (2025) Amazon MGM/Action-Thriller RT: 124 minutes Rated R (strong violence and language throughout) Director: Gavin O’Connor Screenplay: Bill Dubuque Music: Bryce Dessner Cinematography: Seamus McGarvey Release date: April 25, 2025 (US) Cast: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Daniella Pineda, J.K. Simmons, Allison Robertson, Robert Morgan, Grant Harvey, Andrew Howard, Yael Ocasio, Lombardo Boyar, Michael Tourek, Fernando Funan Chen, Abner Lozano, Talia Thiesfield, Presley Alexander, Nik Sanchez, Corwin Ireland, Avery Taylor, Vincent Juskalian, John Patrick Jordan.
Rating: ***
Like most action movies, The Accountant 2 works best if you don’t take it seriously. Sure, the protagonist has autism, but he embraces it instead of treating it like a disability. Director Gavin O’Connor, who helmed the first one, doesn’t exploit it for cheap laughs or tearful sympathy. If anything, it’s a strength. It enables our hero to see patterns that neurotypical people wouldn’t. It’s a skill that comes in handy when you’re going after elusive criminal scumbags.
Ben Affleck returns as Christian Wolff, an accountant who launders money for criminal organizations. He’s also a highly trained, lethal killer. As the film opens, retired Financial Crimes agent King (Simmons, Whiplash), now a PI, is murdered just moments after he meets with a mysterious woman named Anais (Pineda, Plane). He wants her to help locate a missing family of three. Before he dies, King manages to scrawl three words on his arm: “Find the Accountant”. The message is intended for Agent Medina (Robinson, LOTR: The Rings of Power), his protégé from the first movie. Although she’s not keen on working with criminals, she reaches out to Wolff for help in tracking down her mentor’s killer.
Realizing he can’t do it alone, Christian reaches out to his estranged younger brother Braxton (Bernthal, The Amateur), a hired killer who can’t stand that his brother only calls when he needs something. Nonetheless, Braxton makes his way to L.A. where he teams up with Christian to track down the people responsible for King’s murder. As it so happens, they also run a human trafficking ring. It’s up to the brothers to take them down much to the disapproval of law-abiding Medina.
O’Connor lightens up a bit in The Accountant 2. The tone is more comical this time around with the interplay between the brothers, the brains and the brawn. It’s like one of those mismatched buddy movies from the 80s. It’s plenty violent too. There are a few cool action sequences, especially a shootout near the end where the Wolff boys deal with a gang of armed thugs in the Juarez desert.
I like that The Accountant 2 largely (almost completely) stays out of the realm of realism. This movie gets downright silly at times. Christian gets a lot of help from his behind-the-scenes assistant Justine (Robertson), a non-verbal autistic woman who communicates via an electronic voice. She has a group of computer-hacking kids at her disposal. They can do practically anything with a computer. In one scene, they help Christian and Braxton sneak across the border undetected by shutting down surveillance drones. That alone should have ICE breaking down their front door, but it doesn’t. They’re that good. Something like this only happens in movies, right?
I’ll concede the plot is more convoluted this time. I wasn’t always sure what The Accountant 2 was supposed to be about. It has a lot of moving parts. O’Connor doesn’t always connect the dots. The screenplay by Bill Dubuque could have used some tightening up. Thankfully, the movie has the brotherly relationship to fall back on. Ultimately, it’s Affleck and Bernthal who carry The Accountant 2 across the finish line. Not only are they great together, they each have their individual moments. Affleck has a good early scene where his character changes the algorithm on a speed dating website in order to attract more women. That, of course, does not end well. Bernthal’s character doesn’t want to acknowledge he’s a cat person like his brother says. Stuff like this keeps The Accountant 2 interesting.
Of all the characters in The Accountant 2, Pineda has the most interesting character arc. I’m not going to give it away here, but how she got where she is now proves to be something else. Yes, it’s as silly as anything else that happens, but isn’t that the point of an action flick? She does a pretty good job in the role. She’s as lethal as the title character and his brother. Simmons makes the most of his limited screen time. Robinson does solid work as the straight woman to the Wolff’s disregard for the law.
All in all, I’d have to say The Accountant 2 is a solid sequel. At the same time, it’s its own movie. It doesn’t try to recycle the same story. Instead, it builds on the original. It’s not a perfect movie by any means, but it’s a good one. Here’s hoping O’Connor doesn’t make us wait another nine years for a third movie.
