Warning: SPOILERS forThe Accountant 2.
With all of the action and suspense one might expect from a movie likeThe Accountant 2, it’s surprising just how far it goes to outdo the first movie’s sense of humor. Nearly everyone inThe Accountant 2’s castgets at least one humorous moment to shine, although the bulk of those moments certainly go to Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal. If the sequel’s evolution is anything to go on, thenThe Accountant 3should wind up being even more hilarious.
In fact, this has been one of many contributing factors to the largely positive nature ofThe Accountant 2’s reviews. The first movie certainly had its moments, butthe sequel’s increased focus on Chris and Braxton’s relationship allows for numerous fun interactions. Braxton was already the more fun of the two in the first movie, and now he has a greater spotlight on him. That said, he certainly isn’t carrying all of the film’s most hilarious beats.
5The Entire Country Bar Sequence, Including Ben Affleck’s Dance
His Analytical Mind Makes Him One Heck Of A Line Dancer
When Braxton suggests getting drunk in Los Angeles, he’s expecting Chris to take him to a night club. Instead, he winds up at a cowboy bar listening to Chris ask if the house band knows “Enter Sandman” by Metallica. This entire conversation is funny, butthe scene really picks up when Chris gets jealous that his crush is dancing next to another guy. It takes him a minute, but Christian starts picking up on the fact that dancing is really just math translated into rhythm and memory.
ConsideringAnna Kendrick’s absence inThe Accountant 2, it’s nice to see Chris putting himself out there to get a woman’s number. Ben Affleck’s dance has charm, but Braxton’s role in the scene nearly steals the show.Watching Braxton see Chris dance is almost as entertaining as watching the dance itself, and it really pays off with the fight at the end. The trailers cleverly hid the fact that Chris literally asks a man to hit him just so Braxton will have an excuse to beat somebody up. It puts a nice cherry on an already wonderful sequence.
4Chris Getting Impatient With Medina
He Basically Implies That She’s Slow
Cynthia Addai-Robinson’s Marybeth Medina made it pretty clear in the first movie that she wasn’t comfortable taking tips from criminals, so her reunion with Chris was always going to require significant motivation. Thedeath of J.K. Simmons’ Raymond King inThe Accountant 2does the trick. After Medina tracks him down,Chris winds up spending the night in Ray’s old house as he and Medina piece together a wall of evidenceregarding the case Ray was working when he got killed.
However, if it wasn’t clear from his wall-to-wall equations in the first movie, Chris has his own way of doing things. He doesn’t actively chastise Medina’s method of arranging evidence, buthe noisily drums his fingers the whole time she’s setting things up. When asked what he’s doing, he simply responds that he’s waiting for her to finish whatever she thinks she’s doing so that he can do what he needs to do. His blunt response is unexpectedly funny. When she wakes up the next day, Chris has rearranged everything she’s done to fit a pattern he finds more useful.
3Braxton Practicing For His Phone Call With Margaret
It Sets Up One Of The Movie’s Best Subplots
One of the first hysterical scenes in the movie is simply Braxton repeating “Hi, Margaret” into a mirror in varying tones while becoming increasingly agitated, to the point that he has to hold his gun just to calm himself down. It sounds at first as if he might be preparing for a date or a meeting with an ex, butthe scene’s great reveal is that Braxton is simply nervous about buying Margaret’s Corgi puppy.
Since thelong gap betweenThe AccountantandThe Accountant 2, Braxton’s apparently realized he’s lonely. This becomes a plotline throughout the entire film, with Braxton announcing his puppy plans to his brother only to have Chris tell him thathe’s actually a cat person because he has no friends and doesn’t keep a regular schedule. This winds up paying off at the very end of the movie as well, so the “Hi, Margaret” scene essentially becomes the movie’s longest-running joke thread.
2Chris & Braxton’s Phone Call
The Lightsaber Is A Cute Touch
At the end of the first movie, Chris told Braxton that he’d call him in a week so they could meet up. But despite the refusal of nearly anybody in the cast to physically age,the sequel’s timeline acknowledges the eight years that have passed since the first movie’s release. It therefore follows that Braxton’s a bit displeased when Chris finally rings him up whilecasually playing with a lightsaber, not to socialize but rather because he and Medina need some extra muscle.
Christian’s failure to understand why Braxton is angry adds a lot of humor to the scene, but there’s another humorous twist as well. Braxton appears to be on a date when Chris calls, butit’s soon revealed that the young woman in Braxton’s company is actually the sole person he’s left alive after murdering everyone in her house. It’s uncommon for a movie to elicit a chuckle from the reveal of several dead bodies, butThe Accountant 2pulls it off.
1Medina Realizing A Criminal Is Still In The Car Trunk
Not The Kind Of Thing You Typically Forget About
Long before their investigation leads to the reveal ofThe Accountant 2’s acquired savant syndromeand its importance to their search, Medina draws a clear boundary that she wants to handle the investigation lawfully. She’s therefore somewhat miffed whenBraxton punches a criminal enforcer off of a balcony and locks him in her trunk. When she later finds out that Braxton committed several of the murders Ray attributed to Anaïs, she breaks things off with the brothers completely.
In her haste to drive off, however, Medina completely forgets that the enforcer is still in her trunk. It’s only when she’s driven a few yards away that she’s startled by the sound of him banging against the car and shouting for help. Although she’s more or less the moral center ofThe Accountant 2, it apparently hadn’t occurred to her for what seems like at least twelve hours that she might want to let him out for air at some point.
The Accountant 2
Cast
The Accountant 2 sees Ben Affleck reprising his role as Christian Wolff. When an old acquaintance is murdered, Wolff enlists his estranged brother, Brax, to unravel a deadly conspiracy. Alongside Marybeth Medina, they confront a relentless network of killers determined to maintain their secrets.
