• Release year: 2025
• Director: Gavin O’Connor.
• Producers: Ben Affleck, Lynette Howell Taylor, and Mark Williams.
• Screenplay by: Bill Dubuque.
• Cinematography by: Seamus McGarvey.
• Music by: Bryce Dessner.

Shotgun Commentary: an action film as average as they come. Luckily, Jon Bernthal is there to spice up the narrative.

Review

The Accountant 2 is one of the most generic action films a person can encounter. This might discourage a lot of people from watching. However, if you are just interested in people beating each other up and humour as simple and wholesome as it comes, then this one is for you.

Ups and downs

As a critic who remains sceptical of Ben Affleck’s acting abilities, this might not have been my first choice. However, one never turns down the opportunity to watch a free film, and the cast is quite promising. If we omit the obvious. As such, yours truly went to see the sequel of a movie I have not watched. Plus, not gonna lie, after watching this instalment, I might give the first one a chance.

The story is simple. An important man on the good side of the law is killed, and his successor asks “the accountant”, aka Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), to find his killers. Deaths and fighting ensue, with a sprinkle of brotherly bantering and a couple of storylines that go nowhere.

Now, the film doesn’t require a lot of attention or neurons to follow and enjoy. Still, one can’t help but feel a pang of disappointment every time action movies prove to be written with the same mentality as decades ago. It’s a sad reminder that not everybody evolves with the times and, while the female characters of this film are thankfully not objectified, the writing of their personality, evolution, and story seems like it was done by a five-year-old with crayons in comparison to the rest of the film.

Too much to ask

As we established, the Accountant 2 is not a very complex movie to begin with. Nevetheless, when the only two storylines that go nowhere are protagonised by the only two relevant female characters of the film… One begins to wonder. Furthermore, their character development matches the quality of their stories. Allow me to elaborate on both of these cases so you can make up your own mind. And don’t worry, they are completely irrelevant to the main story.

First, you have Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), the successor of the man that’s killed in the first scene. She wants revenge, and she doesn’t care that she is working with trained killers to get it. Except…she does. She really, REALLY does. She establishes that she doesn’t care, frequently. While also constantly complaining, and even leaving in a huff, when the killers mention the act of killing. Ever heard that disgusting phrase “women are crazy, man”, well, her character was made with it in mind.

Medina is portrayed as a woman who is somehow strong and smart enough to get to the top of a very important government agency… Yet dumb and “emotional” enough to not be able to make up her mind about what she wants. At the end of the day, she is just a woman trying to find a comfortable chair. A noble goal that would have been a lot funnier had she actually felt like a real person instead of a sexist cliché.

Extreme makeover: The Accountant edition

And second, the super-cool killer with the perfect face despite apparently being in an accident that completely disfigured her… supposedly. Anaïs (Daniella Pineda) is an illegal immigrant cruelly ripped from her family by a mob. She then becomes a cleaner until she has a terrible car accident that bashes her head so hard it recalibrates her brain and disfigures her face.

For some reason, that horrible moment in her life gives her a tremendous glow up. What would result in death for most, or, at the very least, a pretty significant disfigurement, results in her becoming the smartest, strongest person alive.

Not to mention the result of what has to be the most miraculous plastic surgery in the world. Not a scar or mark in sight. In fact, it looks more like the woman ordered an Instagram filter at a clinic rather than the patch-up an illegal immigrant with the salary of a cleaner would receive at a real hospital.

Would a male character have received such a glow up…or would he have been portrayed like a badass, scarred, murder machine? Well, the conclusions are yours, but being optimistic, I’d like to think in The Accountant 3 they will transform a potato into Ryan Gosling after a bus runs it over. You know, for continuity reasons.

Peak nonsense

Still, once you get past Anaïs’ unexplainable but undeniable beauty, there’s the issue of her story. You learn all about how she’s so fierce and intelligent and incredible, which is awesome and really hypes her up.

And then, you see her: fail to protect a person, fail to hide from cameras, fail to kill her mark, and manage to kill one person because she literally gets their address. Now, why do you bother with an insane story for her, if her actions are going to be about as precise and calculated as Nathan’s in Novocaine (2025)?

All in all, The Accountant 2 is a great film for Ben Affleck fans, but mostly for Jon Bernthal fans. They made a very enjoyable duo where Bernthal is the funny, brave, useful one, and Affleck is…there, which sort of works quite well, actually. If you like action movies, leave anything you might know about scriptwriting or character creation at the door and get ready for a ridiculous, but entertaining way to spend a couple of hours of your life.

Thanks to Warner for big-screen access! The Accountant will be released the 25th of April.

Advice to take from this movie:

• A well-placed cat always improves a story.
• If you can’t act, choose a character that doesn’t require you to do so.
• The right actor can save a film… up to a point.

What’s your take? Have you watched The Accountant 2? Don’t hesitate to let me know your thoughts in the comments section below, or leave a message in my contact page! For more reviews and cinema-related articles, check out the rest of my blog! 😀