The Accountant 2 Parent Guide

Former Treasury Department investigator Raymond King (J.K. Simmons) was up to his eyebrows in something dangerous, and he wound up dead. The last thing he wrote was a message to his successor, Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), telling her to find “The Accountant”. While Medina prefers not to associate with criminals, she does know the man: Chris Wolff (Ben Affleck) is an autistic math savant who handles a lot of large criminal clients – some of whom he then reports to Medina’s office; some of whom he kills with almost supernatural skill; some of whom win the grand prize and get left alone.

With Chris’s help, Medina finds a human trafficking operation run by a cartel through some businesses in L.A.. That’s just the tip of a very dangerous iceberg and even a dedicated loner like Chris knows he’s going to need help. But Chris only knows one guy who would pick up the call - his brother, Braxton (Jon Bernthal). The men haven’t seen each other since they nearly killed one another eight years ago. What could go wrong?

I have some of the same issues with this sequel as I do the original, mostly to do with the depictions of autism. Think Rain Man but with more John Wick added in to jack up the action quotient. It’s not that the script is cruel or unsympathetic; it’s just not a particularly nuanced view of a very complex and varied spectrum of behaviors. Almost as big an issue is killing off J.K. Simmons in the first fifteen minutes.

Despite the title, Chris doesn’t spend nearly as much time actually auditing books as he did in the first film. Now he’s just a liaison for his bizarre Batcave full of non-verbal autistic savants who conduct nearly-instantaneous hacking operations on an international scale at his behest. They handle most of the actual investigation, along with Medina, and Braxton eats into most of the comedy and a fair bit of the homicide. It kind of feels like the screenwriters wrote the protagonist out of the movie.

Unsurprisingly, when it comes to content concerns, violence and profanity are going to be the biggest concerns for family audiences, along with the plot focus on human trafficking and forced prostitution. There’s no on-screen sex or nudity, but there is dialogue describing some horrifying circumstances. On the other hand, you’ll only see brief depictions of social drinking. Despite the cartel element of the story, no drugs are seen or used.

Weighing negative content against the film as a whole, I think it manages to break even. The Accountant 2 depicts an interesting investigation, and the action is competently put together. The film has no standout moments I could point to, but it also didn’t make me want to try and break my neck in the theater seat reclining mechanism, so I’m going to call it a tepid win. I’m sure I’ll have forgotten all about it by this time next week, but I’ll take forgettable over infuriating any time.

About author

Keith Hawkes

Keith Hawkes graduated from Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada with a degree in English and History. His interests are movies, American literature, science fiction, almost every kind of music, and museums. He enjoys criticizing films for fun - although he's okay with being paid for it.