SXSW 2025 Film Review: The Accountant 2
THE SURPRISE SEQUEL OF THE YEAR
The speed-dating, line-dancing, “dudes rock” surprise of the year, Gavin O’Connor’s The Accountant 2 detonates its predecessor’s satisfying, yet tonally confused, drama into something much more assured — and better yet, much more outrageous. A buddy comedy in the place you would least expect it, The Accountant 2 finds strikes the perfect balance of Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal bickering within a web of ludicrous criminal intrigue. Minor spoilers ahead…
From its stylized, exponent-notated title card, you might be able to tell that Gavin O’Connor’s The Accountant 2 isn’t content with just giving us more of the same with Ben Affleck’s autistic actuary-slash-assassin — this time, it’s Christian Wolff “squared.” A 2016 dark horse hit, the first Accountant film introduced us to a tonally confused world, one where its own self-seriousness was consistently at odds with its high-melodrama of neurodivergent hitmen and goofy corporate conspiracy. Flash forward to almost a decade later, and The Accountant 2 is seemingly eager to jettison any misplaced solemnity to lock in on the simple pleasures of the original: Affleck in fixer mode, to-the-point action, and syrupy-yet-effective cheese.
Once again positioning Cynthia Addai-Robinson’s Marybeth Medina as the franchise’s resident straight-shooter, The Accountant 2 puts the Treasury agent hot on the trail of Ben Affleck’s Christian Wolff after her old boss Raymond King (J.K. Simmons) is gunned down unraveling a new criminal plot. With “Find The Accountant” scrawled on King’s cadaver, Medina pulls on the threads to reluctantly team up with Wolff and his prickly brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) in a shaky - and oftentimes hilarious - alliance.
“The Accountant 2 is seemingly eager to jettison any misplaced solemnity to lock in on the simple pleasures of the original: buddy comedy shenanigans, to-the-point action, and syrupy-yet-effective cheese.”
Where The Accountant pretty much wasted John Lithgow and Jean Smart in its tepid conspiracy of embezzlement at a robotics firm, its sequel attempts something much more timely and thematically parallel. This time around, the case revolves around a human trafficking network between Central America and the southern U.S., leaving a wake of broken families and easily-exploited, undocumented immigrants. And lest you think The Accountant 2 is once again falling into the trap of misplaced severity, its lethal heavy is a woman simply known as Anaïs, a mysterious operator whose near-superhuman skills are of a provenance so outrageous, it has to be seen to be believed. It’s a good thing, then, that the entirety of O’Connor’s faster and looser sequel functions on a similar, almost B-movie wavelength, buoyed single-handedly by Affleck and Bernthal’s bickering brothers chemistry.
The Accountant 2 walks a tricky tightrope as most of the laughs - and there are plenty of laughs - come from Wolff’s complete inability to pick up on social cues, but it’s consistently portrayed as empathetically as possible and without being offensive. An early scene has Wolff statistically gaming a speed-dating event to a sea of enthusiastic single women, only to botch every in-person date; it’s the perfect setup for the heart of the movie: a touch-and-go reunion with his estranged brother Braxton. It’s here that The Accountant 2’s more freewheeling structure sets it apart from not only its action-thriller contemporaries, but from its own predecessor. O’Connor has taken the opportunity to make the ultimate hangout movie that doubles as therapy for two co-dependent boys, grown up to be damaged and trauma-stunted assassins; within its core, it’s a movie about brothers. At my SXSW screening, The Accountant 2 maintained a baseline of enthusiasm when it came to its competent action and relatively engaging mystery, but the rowdiest cheering was from an equally rowdy Bernthal as Affleck tears up the square-dancing floor in a mid-movie, bring-the-house-down sequence: “That’s my big brother up there!”
