HE to Gavin O’Connor, emailed last night around 10 pm: “Gavin — I’ve just come from a screening of The Accountant 2, and I fucking loved it! It made me feel like I was 15 or 16 and hanging with friends.
“The brotherly rapport, which is to say the low-key, contentious, character-driven humor….the disciplined brainy vibe, the wonderful Juarez prison camp finale, the tabby cat, that icy blonde assassin (Daniella Pineda), the extra-wonderful country-bar dance scene….escapism par excellence!
“I wasn’t sure at first (the presence of J.K. Simmons‘ Raymond King threw me off) and to be fully honest I never fully put together every last plot strand (looking forward to reading a synopsis before seeing it again), but once Bernthal arrived and the humor kicked in, I was in heaven.
“The original Accountant was better than reasonably decent, and I was naturally hoping the sequel would be as good. But it’s five times better! Magnificent job! Had a great time! — Jeffrey Wells, HE (we haven’t seen each other since that party at Brett Ratner‘s a dozen or so years ago).”
Roughly five years after the release of The Accountant (’16) O’Connor announced that there would not only be an Accountant sequel but a trilogy.
“I’ve always wanted to do three because…we’re going to integrate Jon Bernthal‘s brother into the story,” O’Connor said. “So there’ll be more screen time for Bernthal in the second one. And then the third movie’s going to be, I call it, ‘Rain Man on steroids.’ The third movie is going to be the two brothers, this odd couple. The third one is going be a buddy picture.”
Well, O’Connor lied! Or at the very least he misdirected or jumped the gun or whatever. Because The Accountant 2 is, without a doubt, Rain Man on steroids itself…obviously….a brothers-in-jeopardy buddy comedy with lots of wit and persuasive atmosphere and beat-downs and thousands of whizzing bullets and dust and bald bad guys and crash-boom-bang, but always with the dry humor and a wonderful feeling of assurance that neither Ben Affleck nor Bernthal will get killed…pure fantasy bullshit but a total blast.
I felt vaguely miserable after seeing Sinners and then even more miserable after reading all those deranged Sinners raves, but The Accountant 2 put the roses back in my cheeks. Partly because it’s just a fucking good-guys-vs.-bad-guys movie without a political agenda…no instruction!…no fucking gay guys-because-every-movie-needs-to-fulfill-a-gay-guy quota or lesbians or transies…no quota casting at all, no POCs (unless you count Mexicans) and no bold-as-brass, agenda-driven #MeToo Amazons with glaring eyes and flaring nostrils (although Cynthia Addai-Robinson‘s government agent is terrific)…no woke bullshit…thank you!
I was scared when I saw Affleck’s horrific mint-green-and-orange-creamsicle whitesides, and then I realized “oh, okay, he’s wearing ugly nerd sneakers because autistic guys don’t think about looking good…they wear what they wear compulsively” so I let it go, but my blood ran cold when I first saw them.
I loved, loved, loved a dialogue scene shot in a car lot filled with nothing but silver Airstreams…the total banishing of ugly-ass Winnebagos with those awful, blue-collar color patterns…bliss!
