In Review: 'The Accountant 2,' 'The Legend of Ochi'

The Accountant 2
Dir. Gavin O’Connor
132 min.

The best part of The Accountant was the accounting. We’ve seen plenty of quiet, underground, particular-set-of-skills types in action movies before, but there was something novel about watching an autistic bookkeeper wallpaper a conference room with financial statements and pull off a quick forensic investigation. When Ben Affleck’s Christian Wolff figures out how money gets redirected from a robotics firm, it’s like watching a trick from a stilted and exceptionally modest magician. But when Chris calls on his martial arts training to rip through generic hordes of muscled henchmen, the action is slightly above average but nothing we haven’t seen before. The formula seems to be John Wick meets Rain Man, but honestly the more math Chris can do, the better. Never underestimate the power of mental jujitsu. 

The irresistible hook of The Accountant turns quite a bit more resistible in The Accountant 2, only in part because Bill Dubuque, who scripted both films, doesn’t exploit Chris’ inner calculator as effectively. The larger problem with the sequel is that it assumes, as so many franchises do, that the audience just finished watching the previous film five minutes ago and are so thoroughly invested in the characters and mythology that the nuts-and-bolts of storytelling are unnecessary. The effective opening setpiece involves an assassination that reunites Chris with his frenemy Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), a financial crimes investigator from the Treasury Department who naturally has mixed feelings about working with a bookkeeper for global evildoers. Their closeness to the victim leads them to team up to fight a larger enemy, however, and eventually brings Chris’ hitman brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) into the picture for extra muscle. 

What are Marybeth and these estranged brothers up against? The Accountant 2 makes that question ridiculously difficult to answer, even as it involves criminal activity that get uncomfortably topical for 2025, like Central American gangs engaged in human trafficking and an inhumane holding pen for abducted child migrants, including a kid who has Chris’ special talents. There’s also a bit of mystery surrounding another super-assassin (Daniella Pineda) whose allegiances are murky at best. The Accountant 2badly misses the presence of Anna Kendrick as the cub CPA who’s drawn into helping Chris in the original, leaving more time with Marybeth, who acts a lot like Edward Furlong in Terminator 2, constantly pleading with her robotic partner to stop breaking the rules. 

After getting some blowback for the association of autism with violence in the first Accountant, the sequel opts to abstract Chris’ condition completely, making it seem more like a superpower than anything a real human could have. His nonverbal handler (Allison Robertson) even has a small legion of like-afflected children helping her give him guidance, as if they’re Jedi warriors in training. Director Gavin O’Connor seems most at home when the action stops and he can focus on the relationship between the two brothers, a dynamic not far removed from O’Connor’s terrific MMA movie Warrior. Scenes of Chris and Braxton attempting a night out at a cowboy bar or shooting the shit atop Chris’ Airstream trailer make it seem like the action is getting in the way of a mismatched buddy comedy. Though the film can get a bit cutesy about Chris’ attempts at socialization—a scene at a Boise dating event falls especially flat—O’Connor’s character-first instincts are stronger than his will to hit the obligatory action beats. Maybe a second sequel will solve that equation. — Scott Tobias

The Accountant 2 opens tonight in theaters everywhere. 

The Legend of Ochi
Dir. Isaiah Saxon
95 min.

Somewhere on an island in the Black Sea, where the modern world seems more like a rumor than fact, a group of rural residents have an antagonistic relationship with a furry, monkey-like species called the Ochi. Some, like Maxim (Willem Dafoe), have even dedicated themselves to hunting the Ochi to extinction. A single father who, we’ll later learn, has never fully recovered from the departure of his wife Dasha (Emily Watson), Maxim raises his daughter Yuri (Helena Zengel) to hate the Ochi, a program that extends to other young villagers like Petro (Finn Wolfhard), who he’s taken in as an adoptive son, and a band of pint-sized would-be killers who look up to him. But maybe the Ochi aren’t so bad after all? That’s what Yuri discovers soon after taking in a baby Ochi in The Legend of Ochi, writer-director Isaiah Saxon’s feature debut.

There’s a lot to like about The Legend of Ochi, starting with the Ochi, endearing creations made with an emphasis on puppetry and practical effects. The approach is as much a throwback as the E.T. the ExtraTerrestrial-inspired plot. Saxon’s commitment to setting the film in a weird, grungy world offsets the sentiment, as does Zengel’s grave performance as the extremely serious Yuri. It’s just a shame the film’s storytelling is never as assured as Saxon’s other creative choices. The Legend of Ochi never recovers the energy of its early scenes, attempts at deadpan comedy never quite land, and both Evan Prosofsky’s misty cinematography and the score from Dirty Projectors’ David Longstreth crank the sense of majesty and wonder up to 10. Sometimes the rest of the movie comes this close to matching them. —Keith Phipps

The Legend of Ochi expands into wider release tonight.