Movie Scene: The numbers don’t add up!

Eight years ago, Ben Affleck played, ‘The Accountant’ an autistic accountant-cum-contract killer on the run from John Lithgow’s shady tech boss and JK Simmons’s US Treasury boss, Mr King. Anna Kendrick was also in tow.

Bizarrely, it gained sequel traction and wheels were thus set in motion. However it seems the wheels of Tinseltown turn slowly because, eight years on, we are only now greeting the sequel in the unimaginatively- titled ‘The Accountant 2’.

Last time we saw Christian Wolff (Affleck), he was making up with contract killer brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) after a firefight.

Otherwise, Mary-Beth Medina (Cynthia Adai-Robinson) was about to claim King’s Treasury job.

In the present day, Medina is in the top job whereas the semi-retired King has gone from high-flying to penniless gumshoe. When he gets gunned down while on the trail of a missing migrant family, Medina gets called in because he’s scrawled ‘Find the Accountant’ on his arm prior to dying. Knowing who has talking about, Medina reaches out to Christian, who enlists Braxton as they hunt for the missing family.

If I had to give some advice top people prior to seeing this it would be ‘don’t think too much about the plot’.

‘Why is that?’ I hear you ask. It’s simple: It’ll make your brain hurt trying to figure it out.

Recalling my review of the first film, a huge part of it was asking ‘why’ certain things were happening and why people were doing what they were doing and its much the same here: Why does Medina need to search for Wolff if he has been giving her tips?

Why does no one notice a cabal of autistic child hackers in a care home?

And why, in the eight years it’s taken to do this film, does no-one seem to have aged?

Returning director Gavin O’Connor and writer Bill Dubuque construct a serious story about people trafficking and, despite some fun but all-too-brief action sequences, the plot machinations leave a lot to be desired; talk of people gaining different abilities due to trauma and Daniela Pineda’s McGuffin-like assassin are only some pf the bizarre things in the film as Christian and Braxton kill their way through countless baddies to find the ‘big bad’ Blake (who isn’t convincing as big or bad).

Where ‘Accountant 2’ does succeed is through the fractured fraternal relationship between Brax and Christian.

Wisely seeing chemistry between the two, O’Connor and Dubuque play on it, giving proceedings a ‘buddy comedy’ sheen a la the latter ‘Lethal Weapon’ films with both Affleck and Bernthal bouncing off each other brilliantly and, once more, Affleck’s portrayal as a man on the spectrum is good.

Adai-Robinson is fine with a bit more to do this time round, Pineda’s character is underwritten and the always reliable Simmons does what he can with limited screen time.

Fun when in ‘buddy comedy’ mode, but ridiculous when the plot gets in the way. ‘Accountant 2’ is so-so; entertaining enough when it’s on but forgettable once it’s done – and the numbers just don’t add up.