Of course, Christian Wolff is more than just a number cruncher. Indifferent to whose books he cooks, be they criminal or legitimate, Wolff is not above doing someone a favour, if they ask nicely. At heart, he just loves solving problems and his acquired savant syndrome makes him ideally suited to think outside the box.
He may be socially awkward (and often appear downright rude), and he may be amoral, but he has an exceptional mind. The Accountant squared, or The Accountant ², sees the return of the first film’s original scriptwriter and director, and that is really good news. Gavin O’Connor has never directed a sequel before, so he doesn’t understand that sequels are invariably poor siblings.
But not this one. Talking of siblings, Christian is prompted to call on his own brother, Braxton Wolff (Jon Bernthal), an accomplished hitman currently killing folk in Berlin (Braxton’s own introductory segment is a classic in its own right). Without a trace of ceremony, Christian asks him if they can meet up in Los Angeles in twenty-four hours.
They have a job to do. Maybe Christian and Braxton are not that unalike. They are both lone wolves without a significant other (not even a cat), are largely itinerant, have no permanent address and are highly adept at what they do.
To be fair, Christian has recently attempted to hitch up with a member of the opposite sex, but all his prospective dates have found him unbearably boring. His small talk about tax returns apparently fails to light their fire. As for Braxton, he just scares women off.
They are a rum pair, and so we get two oddballs for the price of one and they do produce their own kind of magic. And while Christian is autistic, the assassin he has been tasked to hunt down is amnesiac, both characters to be judged by what they can achieve, not by what they can’t. The Accountant 2 is an exquisitely directed piece of genre cinema.
Constructed much like a puzzle that Christian Wolff might want to get his teeth into, each chess piece is weighted with a series of extremely dangerous moves. There are a number of games at play here, involving government bodies and criminal groups, sex trafficking, abduction, infanticide and illegal immigration, while Christian’s digital assistant Justine is a tech-savvy female mute who utilises an AI-enhanced voice with a ‘British’ accent. When the FBI and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network are unable to draw on their own technical resources, Justine pits a team of autistic children against each other to do her bidding, who view her assignment as a video game designed to show off their own particular skills.
They’re “my people,” notes Christian sagely. With Bryce Dessner’s pulsating score, the flashy location work and Bill Dubuque’s smart plotting, The Accountant 2 stimulates the senses while engaging the mind. And there’s humour to spare, such as when Christian discovers a joy for line dancing purely to impress a woman, drawing on his mathematical knowhow (there are all those steps to remember…).
All in all, then, the sequel is an exciting, smart, granular, occasionally ingenious and effortlessly cool Hollywood thriller. JAMES CAMERON-WILSON Cast: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Daniella Pineda, Allison Robertson, Robert Morgan, J.K. Simmons, Grant Harvey, Andrew Howard, Lombardo Boyar, Michael Tourek, and the voice of Alison Wright. Dir Gavin O’Connor, Pro Ben Affleck, Lynette Howell Taylor and Mark Williams, Ex Pro Gavin O’Connor, Scott Lastaiti, Jamie Patricof, Matt Damon, Michael Joe, Kevin Halloran, Dani Bernfeld and Alison Winter, Screenplay Bill Dubuque, Ph Seamus McGarvey, Pro Des Jade Healy, Ed Richard Pearson, Music Bryce Dessner, Costumes Isis Mussenden, Sound Mark A. Mangini.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Artists Equity-Warner Bros. 132 mins. USA. 2025.
UK and US Rel: 25 April 2025. Cert. 15.
