If you had to itemize Ben Affleck’s career, you’d probably pick folks going through a crisis — not the superheroes — as his real strength.
While it’s no “Argo,” “The Accountant 2” lets him dig a little deeper into drama than his Batman run ever it. Here, he and Jon Bernthal return as brothers caught up in a wide-ranging drug case.
While Affleck's Christian Wolff is a socially inept accountant with a side hustle as an assassin, Bernthal's Braxton is much more adept at working the angles and confronting the bad guys.
Ben Affleck goes after traffickers in "The Accountant 2," a sequel to an earlier film.
The two are pulled into a case after the death of a former director of the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. As they dig a little deeper, they discover a trafficking situation that, apparently, is minutes from blowing sky high.
When the two finally get to pause (atop Christian's Airstream), you realize much of director Gavin O'Connor's story requires clues to magically present themselves. Cynthia Addai-Robinson as the dead man's successor takes a much more audience-friendly approach to connecting the dots. She has a wall of suspects (do all investigators do this?) and plenty of "strings attached" situations.
Before the Wolff brothers even get to the deeper tragedy, they've got to break a lot of bones and shed a lot of blood. More interesting than that journey is the way a group of oh-so-smart kids can find information and get it to the good guys before it's too late.
"Accountant 2" suggests there's a quick way to discover everything. It's just a matter of finding the source and zooming in.
In this film's case, a woman from Iowa takes a selfie on the street. The kids find her phone, hack its contents, enlarge the photo and find a person in the background who was a key witness to a whole lot of trouble. In seconds, they've tracked her down and begun a bigger hunt.
Brax (Jon Bernthal), left, and Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) in "The Accountant 2."
It's fascinating to watch — particularly since this "Big Brother" view of cellphones is routinely pooh-poohed by those in charge. Still, the method does draw concern and hints at a bigger story.
The brothers don't tackle that (a sequel is likely) but they do suggest there's a place for their brand of justice, if it's tied to the right side.
Bernthal shows more personality than Affleck but Affleck gets the lighter lift. When he does go out of his comfort zone (to try speed-dating and line dancing), he makes this more than his franchise version of "John Wick" or any number of those Liam Neeson films.
"The Accountant 2" is as predictable as overly violent films get. It doesn't look for the grays in situations and winds up with a sense of completion once the right target is found. When that happens, all seems right in the world — even though little that precedes the situation doesn't really make sense.
No doubt, a third installment will emerge. This one, though, reminds us of a better Affleck and the roles he used to play.
