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

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! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
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

(00:33):
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,

(00:54):
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

(01:15):
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

(01:36):
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

(01:59):
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,

(02:22):
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

(02:44):
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

(03:04):
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.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
What ad you you got Batman and The Punishers?

Speaker 2 (03:22):
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

(03:45):
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,

(04:07):
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

(04:29):
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

(04:50):
lot of sense, right And watching.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
The trailer, I found it looked more fun than the original.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
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

(05:18):
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

(05:39):
brain at the door. You'll probably get something out of it,
just as a kind of a brainless action movie.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
I might have rewatched the first one before I see.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
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

(06:08):
watch this as a standalone movie. Take it for what
it is. That's the best way to enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
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?

Speaker 2 (06:22):
I'm gonna only give it two, and both of those
are for John bent Thal.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Well, there you go.