‘The Accountant 2’ yields a more complex movie than its synopsis might suggest.

• ‘The Accountant 2’ reunites the director, Gavin O’Connor, and two key players, Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal, from 2016’s ‘The Accountant’.
• The story-line is an entirely new one, so it isn’t necessary to have watched the earlier film in order to follow this character reprisal.
• Catch Tat Wolfen’s entertainment commentary on The Sandton Times Hour, every Monday at 7pm on 91.9FM.
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Let’s get the bad news out of the way: Why is it that many current filmmakers pay so little attention to the clarity of their character’s dialogue? (Did someone say “specifically Christopher Nolan”?) The titular character of Christian Wolff, portrayed by Ben Affleck, mutters – we get that – but that has to be balanced against the audience’s need to understand what is being said.

All of which cues an interesting bit of trivia: Did you know that up to 65% of Americans with normal hearing watch English streaming programming with the subtitles on? If that doesn’t send a message to dialogue coaches and sound mixers, what does? The indistinct dialogue makes the film’s first act (the set-up) as well as the second part (the expository bits) feel a bit like hard work. The film’s length, at almost two and a quarter hours, also makes demands of us. It could be argued, however, that the final act, that breaks out like a match in a fireworks factory, makes it all worthwhile.

Christian Wolff is an autistic individual, and like many people who are ‘on spectrum’, he is super-intelligent, particularly in the field of mathematical calculation. There are of course, challenges to being autistic, and they largely concern the individual’s ability to engage with the neurotypical people (or “normies”) with whom they need to deal in everyday life.

Ben Affleck’s portrayal of Christian is spot-on, although it’s important to bear in mind that autism expresses itself in a multitude of different ways. Early in the film, we have a sequence which has Christian, in his caravan home, taking telephonic advice as to how to dress appropriately. This routine is both amusing and informative, as autistic people often have difficulty seeing themselves from an outsider’s perspective. The script, and Affleck’s steady performance, highlight the both the strengths and struggles of his character’s world, without ever falling into lazy stereotypes.

The fraught, yet close, relationship that Christian has with his brother Brax (Jon Bernthal) is one of the film’s great treasures. Their fraternal electricity even overshadows the presence of the third leg of the film’s narrative tripod, Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), a U.S. official who engages their below-the-radar services.

The movie’s dark sense of humour pervades its every frame like a black ink-spill. When you catch yourself chuckling at something that would normally horrify you, that’s when you know you’ve been caught in the writer’s wicked trap. Taking a step back, there’s even a dark joke in the title of the movie itself. After all, the word “accountant” (with all due respect to accountants reading this) conjures up images of a mild-mannered, 9-to-5 pen-pusher, and certainly not a lethal man of action. Speaking of pen-pushers, however, there’s a moment in this movie in which Wolff ‘pushes a pen’ in a manner which induced groans of horror from the audience. Whether the literal interpretation of that dark joke was intentional or not, it certainly hits home.

Seamus McGarvey’s rich cinematography extracts the grittiest – and most glamorous – elements of various international locations. That, and Mark Isham’s sometimes overstated score give the film a James-Bondian look-and-feel. Keeping with Wolff’s perceptual standpoint, however, the film has an edge that distances it from your run-of-the-mill action show.

I found the movie’s earlier parts, what with the mumbled dialogue and rambling plot, to be a bit of a task, but once the pace – and merciless violence – picks up, it becomes difficult to remain detached. So, yes; it’s ultimately an action thriller, but infused with wry and cerebral elements that place it firmly within a genre of its own.

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