Quotation of the Day
10th June 2025
ZMan reviews The Accountant 2:
In the first film, Affleck plays an autistic guy who was raised and trained by a military father to be a warrior, but his autism lets him be an accounting savant due to his extraordinary math skills. We first met him when he was hired to audit the books of a biotech company. We learn his backstory as the plot leads him from the audit to the action thriller portion of the story.
The sequel feels like it was made by first putting plot ideas into a hat and then drawing out a bunch of them. These were then given to separate teams of writers to create those sections of the plot. Then it was filmed separately and stitched together by whoever is tasked with editing. It also has far too many people, so it wastes a lot of time trying to explain why they are in the film.
It starts with the J. K. Simmons character from the first film in retirement, working on a mysterious case. He is meeting a female assassin at a bar when a group of assassins turn up to kill him. There is a big shootout with all the John Wick style fighting scenes, but it is unclear if the assassins are there for the female or for Simmons. They kill Simmons, which is the hook to bring in the rest of the cast.
The strong black female who was trained by Simmons in the first film is now being strong and black in his old job. Simmons had written the words “FIND THE ACCOUNTANT” on his arm during the shootout. She sees this at the morgue and then sets out to locate the accountant, Ben Affleck. The death of Simmons is the McGuffin to get the band together to solve the mystery of his death.
At this point the film starts taking detours to explore the characters. We learn that Affleck has been learning how to date. His brother is learning how to buy a pet, which makes no sense at the time. We learn that Affleck works with a secret army of autistic children who help him break into computer systems, identify people, and help him solve mysteries in real time. I did not make that up.
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