A Review of The Accountant 2, Ben Affleck's New Autism-Themed Thriller by an Autistic critic

You don't have to be autistic to enjoy The Accountant 2, but it sure doesn't hurt!

I’ve been on quite the emotional roller coaster with the 2016 Ben Affleck vehicle The Accountant. The sleeper hit allows Affleck to play an autistic combination of his hated rival Matt Damon’s signature characters, Good Will Hunting and Jason Bourne.

In the sleeper hit, Affleck played Christian Wolff, a genius who utilizes his Einstein-level intelligence and James Bond-like skills and reflexes to take from the rich and give to the poor.

I was disappointed in The Accountant because it took itself very seriously and embodied, in usually pure form, a sturdy and ubiquitous cliche that I have a complicated relationship with: the Magical Autistic Super-Genius, an outlier whose neurodivergent superpowers assist the neurotypical.

This archetype is ostensibly flattering, since it depicts the autistic as better than human. Yet it others the autistic community while contributing to the idea that lives on the spectrum are only worth depicting if they involve brainiacs so intelligent space aliens and demons want to harness the incredible power of their unique minds.

I was a little underwhelmed by The Accountant, but it’s one of those movies that are so sublimely ridiculous that you smile just thinking of them.

I have subsequently softened on The Accountant. It became a fond, albeit fuzzy, memory to the point that I had to reread an article I wrote fairly recently to recall what it said.

I was excited about seeing The Accountant 2 as soon as possible. So, after an event for my younger sister Shari’s new book, The Jewish South, which Princeton University Press just released, I went to the 10:30 screening of The Accountant 2 as the perfect way to end my 49th birthday.

People also call me Doctor, but in a mocking, sarcastic way.

My excitement was merited. In between The Accountant and its sequel, returning director Gavin O’Connor and screenwriter Bill Dubuque have developed a sense of humor. They’ve learned to embrace the franchise’s ridiculousness and absurdity rather than denying them.

The Accountant 2 opens with a crackerjack set-piece at a bingo hall where Ray King (J.K. Simmons), Christian’s surrogate father figure, fights for life after being marked for death by a bevy of paid assassins.

Simmons isn’t in the movie long, but he makes an indelible impression. He’s a supporting player who dies early but implicitly makes a strong case that he deserves a vehicle of his own.

In a welcome sign of what’s to come, we’re reintroduced to The Accountant at a singles event where, using his mathematical acumen, he has gamed the system to be the night’s most popular and sought-after man.

Our protagonist’s trickery earns him the attention and enthusiasm of seemingly every woman at speed dating. At that point, his neurodivergent bluntness, unwise candor, and unwillingness to engage in the little white lies and socially mandated fictions upon which neurotypical life depends promptly scare them away. Christian is unfailingly truthful. That registers as rudeness to the neurotypical.

We see a different side of The Accountant here, one less concerned with justice, money, power, accounting, and fairness than in getting laid.

In The Accountant, he cuts a tragic figure as an impossibly accomplished outsider whose adult life represents an extreme response to the trauma he endured as the child of a man who thought his sons needed to be skilled super-soldiers to survive an almost unfathomably complex world.

In The Accountant 2, Christian represents a much more comic figure. There is a levity and self-awareness to Affleck’s performance here that was largely missing from the previous movie. We get to experience much more of Christian’s humanity.

The Accountant is not just a glowering, scowling, uncompromising force for good in the universe: he’s also a goofy dude trying to get laid.

When Christian’s mentor is murdered, Treasury Agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) calls upon Christian and his unique skillset to help her find and punish the people responsible.

Christian, in turn, calls upon the equally unique knowledge of his estranged brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal), a kill-crazy maniac whom he has not seen since the events of The Accountant.

Affleck and Bernthal have an excellent yin-yang chemistry as a man of order who clings to ritual and tradition in a scary, uncertain world, and a wild card who doesn’t think before speaking or acting.

It’s not entirely clear that Brax thinks at all. He’s a proud degenerate with a weakness for sex workers and alcohol who shares with his brother childhood trauma and murder skills that make James Bond look like a milquetoast fop by comparison.

The Accountant 2 lustily embraces its ridiculousness. Christian might seem like a lone wolf, or a wolf that only goes hunting with a brother he has a complicated relationship with, but he has a pack of computer-adept fellow neurodivergent geniuses to assist him when required.

In the kind of warped detail that makes the movie so much fun, Christian’s Autistic Computer Super Squad consists entirely of children.

Children! In movies like this, the autistic brain is such a marvel that kiddies on the spectrum can think circles around hoity toity neurotypical scientists with their fancy degrees and ability to maintain eye contact and have conversations with strangers without having panic attacks.

Brax nudges his brother out of his comfort zone by taking him to a honky tonk where he runs afoul of a creep cosplaying as a cowboy by flirting with a fetching cowgirl he has the hots for.

The Accountant 2 represents a distinct improvement over its predecessor because it contains a sequence where Christian Wolff, autistic super-genius, super-soldier, and super-man, line dances.

Our hero’s analytical mind and autism-honed pattern recognition enable him to line dance like a veteran, even though he’s an absolute beginner.

The hero’s neurodivergence is played for comedy rather than psychodrama or melodrama. That’s somehow far less insulting and offensive than playing this material as a family tragedy.

I’ve learned to stop worrying and love Christian Wolff and The Accountant 2. Affleck is a lot more fun here because he’s having more fun. It’s primarily a comic rather than a dramatic performance.

The Accountant 2 does not capture the reality of life on the spectrum. It’s not interested in reality. It’s not interested in verscimilitude. It’s not concerned with psychological realism.

All this supremely silly motion picture wants to do is entertain with an impossibly pulpy potboiler with an element of wish fulfilment for the neurodivergent and neurotypical alike. On that modest level, it succeeds.

Three and a half stars out of five