The Accountant 2 takes its audience on quite the ride — I laughed, yawned, ooh-ed and yawned some more. Similar to the first go-around with Ben Affleck's Christian Wolff, an underworld accountant diagnosed with autism, Gavin O'Connor's The Accountant 2 aims to be an action-comedy, this time with more consideration given to the latter while failing to service the former.
Returning alongside Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson and J.K. Simmons reprise their roles from the first film, when Raymond King (Simmons) begins poking around about the disappearance of a family of three. A quickly scrawled message from King to "find the accountant" makes its way to Treasury agent Marybeth Medina (Addai-Robinson), who dutifully tracks Christian down.
The film focuses on finding this family, with Christian savanting his way through the various clues and recruiting his brother Braxton (Bernthal) to provide some additional muscle. Tracking down the family proves to be a slog of a "mystery" (if we can even call it that) to solve. While Daniella Pineda puts forth a strong performance as the femme fatale Anaïs, Bill Dubuque's script renders the villains completely bland and uninteresting. I can't even say they're generic — they're just kind of there.
Thankfully, Affleck and Bernthal's brotherly dynamic saves the film from being a total bust. The two bounce off one another perfectly, and they double-handedly keep the film afloat. A line dancing sequence gives them a chance to have some fun, and their action scenes together reflect two brothers moving together in life and death as they've done their whole lives.
An unfortunate side effect of this rousing chemistry is how sluggish The Accountant 2 becomes in scenes without their banter — particularly unfortunate when the baddies in this chapter deal in trafficking and killing children. Had the bad guys been made to be cheesy moustache-twirling villains, at least it could have provided something interesting to watch in contrast to Affleck and Bernthal. Instead, the yawns come at a clip until we're shaken awake by Christian and Braxton's antics.
A film like The Accountant 2 isn't made to be taken that seriously. It's meant to be an entertaining romp in the theatre with big laughs, a suitable amount of violence, and a few explosions for good measure. Most of all, it needs to engage an audience. O'Connor leans into the buddy comedy element greatly in comparison to the first film, but sacrifices the action side of the comedy-action. As any good accountant knows, both sides of the table need to balance.