Ben O'Shea- The Accountant 2: It Almost Makes This Second One Unwatchable.

Published Apr 24, 2025, 5:19 AM

Ben Affleck is back as The Accountant in The Accountant 2 and our movie guy Ben O'Shea went to see it and he gave Smiley his review of it. Spoiler...there's a clue in the title of this podcast! 

Great per flick with Benot Shame. Ben Affleck returns as Christian Wolf in The Accountant two and he had to tell us more Beno Shade, Ben, I can't believe it's almost ten years since the first one.

Yeah, twenty sixteen, if you can believe it, Smiley and that first film came out. It was really kind of like a made for streaming kind of movie that got moderate reviews at the time. Ben Affleck's performance as a neuro divergent accountant for organized crime, so basically he was on the spectrum and he was called in when a drug cartel wasn't sure if someone was skimming some money off the top. So he goes into their books, uncooks the books, tries and figure out where that money is going. Or he works for the mob. But these kind of kind of climbs right, very very dangerous. But he despite that, he has a very strict moral code and so if anyone crosses him or does the wrong thing, then he has to get retribution, completely ignoring the fact that the people that he's working for a responsible for, you know, hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of deaths. That doesn't bother him. But you know, like if you don't pay him on time, that's when he gets pretty kicked off. So which is why you know, like maybe you know, HNR Block is better if you need your taxes done than this guy. But anyway, anyway, and so he was grew up the son of a military man, had a little brother, and you get flashbacks in that first movie of his childhood growing up with autism and then how that shaped him into the person that he is today, and how he learned to be this you know, sort of trained killer, which is kind of it didn't really make a ton of sense in the first movie, but it was the action was pretty good. Ben Affleck's performance was solid. And now along comes the sequel, you know, nearly ten years later, and it's like, honestly, Ben Affleck didn't even watch the first movie, and he's done a completely different performance of the character. It is so bad that I actually question whether he even knows how to act anymore. It is it's because the times have changed a lot, right, so now it's probably not as politically correct for a neurotypical actor to play a neurodivergent character, and especially you know, the way Hollywood depicts people with autism. They don't really represent them on screen at all unless they have some kind of savulntability. So there's some kind of you know, amazing computer hacker, or they're a maths genius, or they're turned into a super soldier like they do in this movie. And so this film kind of covers off all of those bases because it uses this special school that Ben Affleck grew up in in the first movie. All of the kids going to that school now are his minions doing his hacking work behind the scenes, so hacking into people's phones and CCTV cameras and US military drones. So you've got these ten year old kids hacking into drones to facilitate extra judicial killings in Mexico. Does that make any sense? I would say probably not. But the good thing about this movie is John Bernhal, who people who've watched The Punisher The Walking Dead, he is amazing. I love this guy.

What ad you you got Batman and The Punishers?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so John Bernhal is his Ben Affleck's little brother, and he made a sort of a little cameo at the end of the last movie, and which was probably the best bit of the last movie. And so fans will be happy to know that he's pretty much in this whole movie, and it turns it into a like just a kind of a classic buddy movie. And the scenes with the two brothers together are by far the best bits in the movie. But again, I'll preface that by saying a lot of the humor is kind of predicated on the idea that autistic people say things that are funny when they're talking to neurotypical people. So I don't know, to be honest with you, I found that a little bit iffy. But John Bernthal's performance is great, the action is pretty good. Very underrated, I agree, one hundred percent. He's very very underrated. The plot itself, you know, like you don't go into a movie like this expecting an amazing plot, but this one is so convoluted. Well, I found myself because it's so he is basically called in to help solve this investigation by you know, the US Treasury Department, but then it turns into a people smuggling thing, and then it turns into this other person who was in a car accident and then developed like super soldier abilities because they had a brain injury. I don't know if that's true, but it seems pretty far fetched to me. And then there's multiple villains and it's going around in circles. They end up in Mexico at one point, so a lot of it doesn't make a lot of sense, right And watching.

The trailer, I found it looked more fun than the original.

More fun for sure the first one. The first one was a pretty dour event, you know, like it was there wasn't much joy to it. This one probably goes too far the other way. You know, You've got Ben Affleck's character speed dating, and of course he's terrible at it because he's neurodivergent, and so I don't know if that's really funny, but anyway, that's how the movie pitches it. And then he's also then he's also bootscooting in a cowboy bar. But the best bit about that, but the best bit about that is still John Bernthal, who, of course the brothers get into a fight with all these cowboys and John Bernthal looks like he's having the time of his life, and so he is amazing. The rest of the film is very questionable. People will still go to the movies and enjoy this, I think, you know, like if you are able to kind of park your brain at the door. You'll probably get something out of it, just as a kind of a brainless action movie.

I might have rewatched the first one before I see.

The only thing I would say about that is, if you rewatch the first one, the difference between afflex performances between the two almost makes this second one unwatchable. You're almost better to go don't watch the first one. Normally I would not advise that, but the movies are so different in terms of ben Affleck's performance that I don't think and you don't need to just go in and watch this as a standalone movie. Take it for what it is. That's the best way to enjoy it.

The accounted to gosh, it's almost text on again too, isn't it. And then how many buckets of popcorn are we giving the accounted two?

I'm gonna only give it two, and both of those are for John bent Thal.

Well, there you go.