The Accountant 2 was a pretty lousy movie. And that’s a shame, because the first one actually happened to be pretty good. But I guess that’s the way it goes with lots of sequels, and always has been. Sequels are tough to make. You either copy the original as a carbon copy or you veer off in a very different direction, which often results in losing the audience who loved the original. The best sequels (the Godfather 2, Aliens, and Terminator 2,) do veer off in a very different direction, but it tends to be a much needed change that actually improves the series.
The Accountant 2 is indeed different than the first movie, only it’s different in all the wrong ways. Basically, the things we liked about the first movie are lost here. Let’s start with the “love interest.” In the first movie, she was played by Anna Kendrick. Now, she wasn’t really a love interest so much as a woman that Christian Wolf (the protagonist, played by Ben Affleck,) was helping and protecting. The Anna Kendrick character was a fellow accountant who unknowingly got involved in something dangerous. And Affleck and Kendrick had chemistry. Not a ton, but enough. It would have been nice to see her back in some capacity. But she’s not.
Instead, the role of woman that Christian Wolf is protecting goes to the financial crimes investigator, Agent Medina, who was investigating him in the last movie. There Medina was a small player, on Christian’s tail, overshadowed by the J.K. Simmons character (Ray King,) who played her boss. Here, she’s promoted to third lead of the movie. And unlike Kendrick’s character who really didn’t belong in this world and just sort of stepped in it by accident, Agent Medina is completely responsible for being there. In fact she seeks it out. And she seeks Christian Wolf out too.
Thats the next problem… in the first movie the financial crimes investigators were pursuing him, and here they are recruiting him, literally asking for his help. I suppose that’s meant to be like a Terminator to Terminator 2 change, with Wolf being “the bad guy,” in the first movie, and then “the good guy” in this one. Only he never really was a bad guy. He was an antihero. He was never the villain. In fact, in both movies he was protecting someone, and fighting to right wrongs. So that change really doesn’t work.
The first movie also featured a far superior cast. Not only is Kendrick missing from the sequel, but for the most part so is JK Simmons. He does appear in the film, but only in the very first scene. It’s more of a tease than anything else. With the loss of these two, and no replacements, (not even a name actor in the villain role, where we had John Lithgow the first time around,) this movie is sorely lacking. Now it does feature Jon Bernthal, alongside Affleck, (who is also a returning cast member from the first movie,) but that is absolutely it. And whereas the first movie sort of hid that Bernthal was in it (I don’t think he even appeared in any of the trailers,) in this movie he’s front and center. In other words, this movie is taking things that the first one didn’t even need to advertise, and acting like we should be applauding that they are in here.
There are other things that are lousy about this movie too. The character. With all of his weird eccentricities, was somehow tolerable and okay to follow in the first movie, but here, he’s annoying. The action was pretty cool in the first movie, and he more or is forgettable and unimpressive. And the case that Christian is working on was kind of interesting in the first movie…about a company that used robotics to help handicap people and the financial corruption within the company. Here, it’s just a bunch of ideas thrown at the screen with no clear focus.. a missing family, a female assassin, and a child kidnapping organization. All connected only by a confusing plot. It’s a bad movie, plain and simple, but I suppose that’s to be expected when the first one was only barely good itself.