The Accountant 2 (2025)

Gary and I had a good time with the first installment, so we decided to give this one a whirl and it simply doesn't work in the same way. Affleck's character is the same and that's the one thing that does go well, but they otherwise tweaked a winning formula in all the wrong ways. 

Beefing up the role of his brother would've been alright if his brother weren't also an atypical personality but, since he's both needy and chaotic, it just feels like adding another main dish that isn't quite as tasty as the first. Another issue is that our "avatar" --  a Treasury Department investigator named Marybeth -- is a naysaying skeptic that is more horrified than energized by what Christian can do. We are watching this movie for fun and having someone shit all over the fun at every turn kind of ruins that. And then there's the mystery itself. In the first film it was about corporate greed, but this time around it's about human trafficking and slaughtering inconvenient children, which is just way too heavy for a popcorn flick.

If the movies had come out in reverse order, I'd have never bothered watching another.

C-