Movie Review: The Accountant 2

The new movie "The Accountant 2" is the sequel to "The Accountant", released in 2016. Considering how good the original movie was, it is surprising that it has taken nine years to release this sequel. Even more astonishing is how convoluted and insane the screenplay is, looking like it needs about 5 more rewrites, just to make the story coherent. One of the best reviews on Rotten Tomatoes is from critic Charles Koplinski:

"As for the ridiculous nature of the mystery that brings them together, it defies logic, the final solution an insult to the audiences’ intelligence. This situation would be right at home only in the most absurd soap opera. It also doesn’t play fair with the audience, the out-of-left-field answer likely to induce an epidemic of eyerolls".

How can it be that nine years did not uncover a better idea and screenplay, realizing the potential future money that can come from this franchise, and a very good idea about an extremely high-functioning Autistic man who is a super genius and has impressive martial arts skills?

The good news about this new movie is that there is much more humor with good scenes involving Christian Wolff, played by Ben Affleck, and many more bonding scenes with Christian's brother Braxton, played by Jon Bernthal. All of the original main characters return for this sequel, including Marybeth Medina, played by Cynthia Addai-Robinson, and Ray King, played by J.K. Simmons, with the exception that Anna Kendrick, who was very good in the original movie, unfortunately does not appear in this sequel.

The ending of this movie was an over-the-top, not believable gun battle scene with Christian and Braxton outnumbered 20-1 in an attempt to rescue about 50 young children from being assassinated, that I thought was largely unnecessary and too disturbing to put into the conclusion of a movie like this.

I mostly agree with the middle-of-the-road Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 76% for a movie that should have clocked in at 95% or higher. I give this movie a marginal recommendation mainly for some of the humor and not for the plot, which was disconnected, hard to follow, and way too convoluted.