The Accountant 2

There was a moment while watching The Accountant 2 in which I genuinely thought to myself, “Am I hallucinating this film?”

Because it’s rare to watch a film that is so oblivious to how completely unhinged in its intentions, just bad idea after bad idea, and yet manages moments of – potentially unintentional, probably accidental – excellence.

It’s not like anyone was screaming out for a sequel to Ben Affleck’s 2016 action flick The Accountant, part of the swath of ill-considered John Wick knockoffs for which big-name actors did some combat training and no rehearsing. Better than some, worse than others, The Accountant seemed like a one-and-done affair. Yet almost a decade later we’re subjected to a sequel that doesn’t simply not know what it wants to be but actively struggles against the idea of coherence.

For those of you that have forgotten (and why would you remember?), Affleck plays Christian Wolff, a mathematical savant, freelance criminal bookkeeper, and hit man (keep up, this doesn’t get any easier) who is backed up by a school of kids with autism who are all white hat super hackers. If you’re tired from reading that sentence, imagine the soul-draining effort of writing it. Anyway, something something, Treasury Department, somebody beaten to death in a bathroom, a rogue Treasury agent (Addai-Robinson) investigating the murder, Christian shooting things.

These elements of the film are not just bad. They feel like they could have been written at any point in the last 50 years and every star with a halfway decent agent would have taken a pass on it. Hell, one could imagine Hulk Hogan getting offered this after Assault on Death Mountain and saying, “Too corny, brother.” It’s absolute garbage, dreadfully written (by Bill Dubuque, returning), filled with plot holes and storylines that disappear for seemingly ever, and the action sequences are generally just above The A-Team – the show, not the movie. If anything, the greatest plaudits must go to Anna Kendrick for avoiding coming back for the sequel.

But peeking its head out from this pile of trash is the ghost of one of the year’s most wildly entertaining movies. In the first film, Affleck was at least trying to do something at least a little grounded, but here he doesn’t simply lean into the idiocy of the concept. He positively cannonballs into it. While the A-plot wobbles along, he is clearly having much more fun in scenes like the completely socially inept killer going to a speed dating event and being baffled as to why his carefully researched questions are a complete turnoff. This version of Christian is a hyper-dweeb, Sheldon Cooper with abs and a TTI V Seven Sovereign assault rifle, and I swear to god that Affleck is doing a very deliberate vocal impression of Milton Waddams, the Swingline stapler king from Office Space.

That would be absurd enough to be entertaining while seeming accidental. But when Jon Bernthal turns up as his estranged brother, Brax, it’s clear that the film they wanted to make was a bizarre sketch comedy about siblings who are both professional killers and extremely unlucky in love. Of course, that film would be very unlikely to gross the $155 million that the original The Accountant pulled in, but it’s infinitely more interesting than the generic and vaguely insulting mess of the rest of the film. Together, Affleck and Bernthal have undoubted comedic chemistry, although Bernthal may steal the entire film with one scene in which he becomes increasingly disappointed that his dinner date doesn’t want ice cream. In moments like those, or when the two brothers bicker while sunbathing on the roof of Christian’s Airstream, The Accountant 2 is almost watchable.