PREMISE
Christian Wolff applies his brilliant mind and illegal methods to reconstruct the unsolved puzzle of a Treasury chief’s murder.
THE GOOD STUFF
BEN AFFLECK & JON BERNTHAL – Sometimes, with mid-level action movies such as this one, you get two notable stars together who are themselves fantastic actors with long histories of awesomeness, you add in some good action sequences, and the result is a pleasant experience… but remains an action film with no real weight behind it (Like the film THE AMATEUR, which was released a couple of weeks ago). Mid-tier action film sequels always have a singular assignment: make it fresh. Don’t repeat the same steps that you did before just because it worked.
That being said, THE ACCOUNTANT 2 is a way funnier film then it’s selling itself to be, and that is because of the pairing of John Bernthal and Ben Affleck. This film is a weird blend of about three different genres and has complete tonal changes throughout, but the chemistry between Affleck and Bernthal never wilters. They’re so good together I’m convinced that this could have been a movie about them getting reacquainted as brothers with no action whatsoever and it would have worked somehow.
THE WORLD-BUILDING – The first ACCOUNTANT film is very straightforward. It’s hinting at capabilities of world-building, but only hinting, and never following through. In this film, however, not only are we thrown into this world of global assassins, but we’re also introduced to an X-Men School of autistic computer hackers. As silly as that sounds, this is done in earnest and a lot of the sequences showing off what they can truly do are really well done – and very entertaining to watch. There’s also a significant portion of the film dedicated to a third antagonistic assassin who’s backstory montage is done in such an effective way it was really impressive.
THE BAD STUFF
THE AMOUNT OF ACTION – Don’t get me wrong, when this film turns it “on”, this is exactly the kind of run-and-gun action that you may come to expect. Is just as good here when it wants to be. However, this film truly cares about setting a good story, and possibly building a vessel for some sequels rather than spending their budget on more explosions and things.
There are at least three or four instances in this film where we could have had a hand-to-hand combat sequence, or something just a little bit more elaborate – but that was not the case. I don’t think the film suffers from it, however I think a lot of people are going to be expecting some kind of a Diet-Coke-John-Wick with this, and boy is that not going to be the case here.
JK SIMMON’S USAGE – It’s almost has nothing to do with the film, it’s just something I need to rant about a little bit. I understand that JK Simmons is one of those character actors who’s been grinding for about the last 35 years or so bouncing from medium to medium and putting in a hefty resume sprinkled here and there. But as of late there’s been a number of big projects that that man has been involved with including this one where his usage is very underutilized. After 2014 JK Simmons was heavily utilized. He really struck while the iron was hot. But with post pandemic JK Simmons we get films like this, films like THE JUSTICE LEAGUE, RED ONE, SATURDAY NIGHT, JUROR #2, and this. Severe underutilization. This is perhaps stuff that just bothers me but I feel it needs to be said.
THE UGLY STUFF
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I’m not going as far as to say that THE ACCOUNTANT 2 is one of the best sequels ever made. That would be dramatically overstating things when it comes to how good this film is. However, this is one of the few sequels that I can think of that is completely superior to its predecessor in practically every single way… and the things that it’s not better in, it’s just as good.Â
THE ACCOUNTANT 2 is a fun movie. It’s not selling itself to be that, but it is. I hope they crank another one of these out real soon.
THE ACCOUNTANT 2 is now playing in theaters.
