The Accountant 2 is finally happening, and the first movie still rules

Ben Affleck’s 2016 action movie The Accountant has a surprisingly big cult following. Despite somewhat lackluster performance at the box office, fans of the movie (including Affleck himself) have been hoping for a sequel for years, and now it finally seems like it’s happening. Amazon MGM and Artists Equity, Affleck’s production company, have acquired the rights to the series from Warner Bros. and are moving forward with The Accountant 2, the companies announced Thursday.

While the announcement didn’t include many details about the sequel, we do know most of the original cast is coming back. Affleck will return in the title role, along with Jon Bernthal, J.K. Simmons, and Cynthia Addai-Robinson. The movie will once again be directed by Gavin O’Connor (Warrior) and written by Bill Dubuque (Ozark).

It’s great news, because The Accountant rules. It’s a blatantly ridiculous action movie that uses tax documents to kick-start 007-level espionage and violence. The movie stars Ben Affleck as the titular Accountant, a pencil pusher who’s turned his genius-level math skills into an empire, mostly by working with criminal organizations to make sure their books look good should any feds come knocking. Of course, all this goes wrong one day and everyone ends up hot on his heels. This is where the Accountant’s other skills come into play: He’s damn good with a gun.

If all male film roles can be broken down into either Matt Damon roles (nerdy, unassuming, bookish but alarmingly competent) or Ben Affleck roles (brutish, smart but would absolutely still bully a nerd, smoother than you’d expect) then the lead character of The Accountant is absolutely a Damon role. Which is exactly what makes casting Ben Affleck so much fun.

The Accountant’s name is Christian Wolff — yes, it’s a metaphor, obviously — and he’s great with numbers. As previously stated, he’s also really good with guns, his fists, and basically any conventional means of death and destruction we can imagine. In the exact way that James Bond and Ethan Hunt often surprise their enemies with their intellects, Wolff surprises them with his violence. But this is what makes casting Affleck such a fun choice. The boring version of the role would make him a demure nerd whose proficiency at violence is unexpected. Instead, Affleck spends most of the movie looking like he’d rather break a computer than use one.

But despite playing against his usual on-screen persona, Affleck seems completely at home portraying Christian’s intellect. He delivers the character’s explanations of various plots and schemes with winning confidence (and mostly without the charm that made him famous), trading it in for a stiff formality that better fits the character.

Image: Warner Bros/Everett Collection

But The Accountant has more going for it than just Affleck. The rest of the movie is full of people you’re always happy to see in a movie, like J.K. Simmons, Anna Kendrick, John Lithgow, Jean Smart, and Jon Bernthal. It’s an all-star cast of “oh shit, I forgot they were in this,” which is part of what’s made it a hallmark of cable channels since it was released in 2016.

More so even than the stacked cast, what makes The Accountant sing is its surprisingly great action. The movie is filled to the brim with fantastic shootouts, fistfights, and brawls, handled mostly by second unit director Sam Hargrave, who would go on to direct both movies in Chris Hemsworth’s brutal Extraction series. But even beyond the action, director O’Connor manages to make the violence of the movie’s world feel like it infects every scene, adding a thrilling tension to the number crunching that makes embezzlement and skirting tax law feel as tense as dodging bullets.

The Accountant’s sequel may not come out for a few more years, but it’s nice knowing it’s on the way. More importantly, it’s exciting that the project is in Affleck’s very capable and enthusiastic hands. The good news is, while we wait for the sequel to arrive, the original still kicks ass and is always fun to revisit.

The Accountant is streaming on Apple TV Plus, and is also available for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play.