there is not enough accounting in the sequel to The Accountant

I know this sounds like a bit but I swear I am serious

The sequel to The Accountant is a pretty good time. It’s got a lot of stuff you love to see in an action movie: mysterious assassins, criminal conspiracies that lead to surprising places that involve human trafficking and scary fishmongers, Jon Bernthal threatening bad guys while a lollipop dangles out of his mouth, all of the classics. It’s also much funnier than the original, with a heavier focus on the sibling interaction between Bernthal’s psychotic assassin and Affleck’s more reserved underworld accountant (who also does assassinations). There were a few moments in the theater where the whole audience laughed really hard. There was also a man behind me in the theater who said things like “got him” and “take that, sucker” when a goon got taken out. I mean this sincerely when I say it added to the experience.

There are also a few things that don’t work, or at least that left me preferring the original, a film I did not see in the theater but have watched maybe 65 times on TNT. One thing is the depiction of autism, which leans even harder into Affleck’s character’s diagnosis being a kind of superpower and adds in an army of teen super soldiers at the institute he funds that can hack any device or encrypted network better than Homeland Security. As a disability awareness issue, I suppose this is better than an alternative where everyone is portrayed as feeble and unable to contribute to society, but it would be nice to find a middle ground somewhere eventually. Another problem, less of a societal issue than a storytelling one, is that there is simply not enough accounting in this movie.

This sounds like a bit. I know. I promise I am aware it sounds like I am doing a bit, or at least that I am setting you up for one. But I also promise that this is a serious piece of criticism, both specifically and in a larger sense. It is also kind of a bit. But that comes later.

One of the charms of the original movie is that the plot spun out from the thing where The Accountant uncovered the villain's identity through actual accounting. He realized John Lithgow was cooking the books of the company and that the murders that were taking place stemmed from the fraud. That was cool. There was a whole montage smack in the middle of the movie where he figured it out with nothing but markers and dry-erase boards. I had never seen that before and I watch a lot of action movies.

The sequel — I don’t want spill too much here because it really is mostly a good time and worth checking out — features almost no accounting. Like, barely any at all, beyond a brief scene where he clocks a bad guy by scanning through a tax return. Instead, we get raised stakes, with international criminal organizations involved in human trafficking and super-assassins with something called Acquired Savant Syndrome. (Somehow no one pointed out that the acronym for this diagnosis is ASS.) We’ve seen those movies before. They usually star Jason Statham. This is by no means a complaint. More of an observation.

We’ve also seen this kind of exponential stakes-raising from sequels before, and yes, this is where we point out once again that a movie franchise that started with street racers stealing DVD players has since sent Ludacris and Tyrese into outer space in a NOS-powered Pontiac. My point is that I don’t think The Accountant needed to do that. The fun for me was the accounting, which is an outrageous thing for a person who hates math as much as I do to say. Everything else was basically fine. But give Ben Affleck some markers and an empty conference room and let him unravel a web of criminal activity before we get to the shooting. That’s all I’m asking.

Hell, I’m not even asking for all of that, honestly. I’ll settle for him at a huge group dinner with two dozen mob associates where he says “I’ll take the check” meaning “I am good at math so I will calculate what everyone owes” and it leads to mass confusion when all of them realize he didn’t mean the meal was on him. Show me him saying something like “Sergei, you ordered the sushi so you owe $274.44” and then show me Sergei saying “I thought you were paying” and then show me him, very seriously, replying “Why would I pay for food that you ate?”

This is what I meant earlier about there being a bit, eventually. I think we both knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop myself. All the other points stand, though.

STUFF I TYPED

— my Friday newsletter, which opened with a section about Heads of State, a movie that looks so dumb I can’t believe it’s real

STUFF I CLICKED ON

— good piece about Ryan Coogler and the path that led him to Sinners

— interesting box office analysis from Myles McNutt, who chats with an expert to break down how much of a hit Sinners has been (and might not actually be)

— Michael Pina wrote about the ways Nikola Jokic is a basketball genius and I ate it right up

— deep dive on a $243 million crypto heist that I fully expect to inspire one good movie and dozens of crappy ones

— I don’t think you need to be watching the final season of The Righteous Gemstones to appreciate the genius of Walton Goggins playing a cocaine-fueled elderly preacher who casts himself in a musical he wrote about a teenage Jesus and proceeded to title Teenjus

— Helen Rosner reviews Bradley Cooper’s cheesesteak

— “heinous loser” is an incredible burn

— my beloved Black Bag begins streaming on Peacock this weekend

— Nathan Fielder is a rascal

— Will Forte is freaking stoked about Coyote vs. Acme getting a second chance

— learned about a big angry Greek whale

— “Historians dispute Bayeux tapestry penis tally after lengthy debate”

— “Archaeologists find wreck of large medieval boat in Barcelona”

— Toys R Us movie question mark

— “Why Do So Many Men Refuse To Wear Shorts?”

— Ben Affleck took a trip into the Criterion closet to discuss his favorite movies and, while the whole thing is solid, I’m mostly posting it here because he mentions his famous commentary track from Armageddon (“AIM THE DRILL AT THE GROUND AND TURN IT ON”) and I will take every opportunity to link to that sucker

Okay, that’s all for this week. Please share and consider upgrading and maybe open up a spreadsheet or two to see if someone is doing crimes.