“The fall didn’t kill him. It was the abrupt stop.”
Ben Affleck returns as Christian Wolff, the titular, autistic, Spec-Ops-qualified accountant in The Accountant 2. The Accountant 2 is an action-comedy seen through the prism of a buddy-cop flick where the buddies are estranged brothers who aren’t cops but trained to be two of the best killers in the world. At its heart is a mystery that twists back on itself like a Möbius loop, involving mass-murder, hitmen, human trafficking, and of course, financial crimes. It is bigger in almost every aspect than the first and full of an unexpected warmth it derives from the complex relationship and great comedic timing of the two brothers. This sometimes brutal, complicated, well-characterized, well-choreographed, clever movie is far funnier than it has any right to be.
The Accountant 2 is a 2025 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film directed by Gavin O’Connor from a script by Bill Dubuque. Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal star along with Cynthia Addia-Robinson, Allison Robertson, J.K. Simmons, Robert Morgan, Daniella Pineda Yael Ocasio, and Grant Harvey.
“We don’t get to decide who lives and who dies!”
“Apparently, I do.”
It has been eight years since the first Accountant. In Los Angeles, Raymond King (Simmons) has left his job as Director of the FinCEN and became a gumshoe. He is on a missing persons case. All he has is a faded photo of the Sanchez family. While he waits for his contact, the assassin-for-hire Anaïs (Pineda), a hit-squad led by Cobb (Harvey), infiltrates the bar and the surrounding streets. The canny Anaïs spots them on the way in and informs King of their presence. He warns her off and springs the trap. Gunfire cracks, and chaos ensues in the confines of the bar as panicked patrons stampede for the exits. King fends off his attackers and acquits himself well, proving that his pen is mightier than the sword when he wields it as a weapon of war. Given a moment of reprieve, he scribbles a message on his arm and then makes his way out. There, Ray is met with the bark of sniper fire, shot dead and dropped to the asphalt.
Marybeth Medina (Addia-Robinson), a Treasury Agent at FinCEN who worked under King is called in by the LAPD and asked to identify the body. The coroner shows her what’s written on King’s arm, three words: “Find the Accountant”.
After finding the Sanchez family photo wedged in the seat cushions at the scene of the crime and renting the house that King was staying at, she begins her search by examining the evidence that Ray had collected on his missing persons case. She neatly pins all her facts on her living room wall. In the files, Marybeth comes across a business card for the Harbor Neuroscience Academy with a name, “Christian Wolff”, scrawled across the back. She contacts the academy, but the receptionist pleads ignorance.
Unbeknownst to Medina, Wolff has people at the Neuroscience Academy, and he is alerted to her search. He tracks her down and agrees to assist her. She shows Wolff her data and laments that the evidence doesn’t have a through-line she can see. Slightly annoyed, Christian dismisses her so he can get to work. In the morning, she is dismayed to see her neat charts spun into three triangles, fact clouds arranged around the Sanchez photo. Wolff explains his process the best he’s able, and when the worldwide web of murder becomes clear to Marybeth, she realizes that they need more hands on deck.
Wolff calls in his amoral brother, Braxton (Bernthal), knowing that his sibling is more than up to the task. Following a lead and with Marybeth in tow, the pair arrive at a motel, tease out some clues and begin to bull their way through the China shop by putting the bag on a pimp’s Catcher.
Buckling under the strain of working with a known murderer and mob accountant, Medina’s strict moral code and agency protocols are stressed even further by the addition of the trigger-happy brawler, Braxton. When the pair gleefully throw a battered, bleeding, and unconscious man in her government-issue car’s trunk, she breaks. Marybeth bitches the brothers out and takes off. She vows to find the Sanchez family on her own, not knowing that now, alerted to the investigation, Cobb and his teams are closing in on her.
Can Marybeth get the Catcher to confess so she can crack her case with conventional techniques? Can the mercurial Braxton get his neurodivergent brother to understand how much he loves him? Can Christian’s unique talents lead him to discover the Sanchez family’s whereabouts before King’s killers strike? Why was Ray reading a book on Acquired Savant Syndrome? What does Anaïs have to do with any of this? Please see The Accountant 2 for answers!
“Do you like puzzles, Mr. Wolff?”
The Accountant 2 leans a little bit too much into the idea of autistic savants, with practically every neurodivergent character in the film shown to have special abilities or perceptions, whether inherent at birth or acquired as result of trauma. Christian’s particular set of intellectual skills is contrasted nicely with the martial mastery Anaïs attains. The Bond-esque, Q-Branch, advanced equipment at the Harbor Neuroscience Academy is manned by autistic children who are living very productive lives by assisting Wolff in his anti-crime crusade. In a particular bit of irony, by cleaning the books of criminals, Christian funnels the bulk of his ill-gotten gains back into Harbor while providing tips to King and (anonymously) to Medina, allowing them to apprehend the illegal operators performing at ultra-high levels and bring them crashing down to Earth through mundane tax-crime cases.
That being said, in light of HHS Secretary RFK JR’s statement that neurodivergent people are useless eaters, The Accountant 2 shines a very needed, very positive light on autistic people, providing a welcome (fictionalized) window on a marginalized population.
The picture is replete with intelligent use of small arms, smoke grenades, squad tactics, drones, and personal armor. For about 3/4ths of the runtime, The Accountant 2 takes its violence very seriously. People who are smashed, shot, or stabbed (in the balls, with a pen) aren’t like, “I’m ok, Jimmy!” and continue the fight. However, in the climactic battle, the old trope of the “bullet-proof” pickup truck comes to out play, and in a crucial moment, Braxton develops grenade immunity.
Bernthal and Affleck drive the movie. They ably sell the action and carry the comedic load with superb rhythm. Bernthal needles Wolff like a believable sibling just trying to get a rise out of his older brother. The audience roared with laughter at some of their more silly interactions. Bernthal makes Braxton’s love for his brother clear despite his character’s irascible nature. He has spent his entire life “cleaning up for the weirdo”, as he puts it, but also acts as his brother’s guide, in one instance, helping him reality-test when a waitress hits on an unmindful and unsuspecting Christian. What followed was this reviewer’s favorite scene in the film, as Wolff learned how to let go a little by line dancing with a pretty lady. Then, to pay back Braxton, he instigates a bar fight with a bigot, allowing his brother to come rushing to his rescue with both fists flying
The entertaining Accountant 2 lacks the high style, sheer intensity, and gore of a John Wick flick, but around the engrossing central, sharp and tangled mystery of the Sanchez family is a broader, more comprehensive exploration of Christian Wolff’s world and how being neurodivergent colors all aspects of his life. If they continue making these films, Bernthal and Affleck’s incredible chemistry will turn The Accountant into a must-see franchise.
The Accountant 2 is in theatres Friday, 4/25/25
Anthony Andujar Jr. 
Newsdesk